Who, me?

During our last NARWA carpool, we were chatting away when my friends decided I was organized.

My first thought? “Yeah, right.” I believe I said something like, “You wouldn’t say that if you saw my desk at work.”

That’s true. My desk is one of the messiest in the newsroom, with piles and piles of stuff. My bedroom is the same way: stuff everywhere. Of course, I do know right where to find most things, so I guess you could call it “organized chaos.”

And yes, I am that girl — the one who has an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of her word count progress.

I have to use that silly program somehow, since I paid an arm and a leg for it in my Office package. I bought it for the Word, but refuse to have TWO unused programs. Since I have no idea how to set up Entourage, Excel it is. I’ve even figured out how to create cool charts to show my progress.

Hmm. If that makes me organized, I’m guilty as charged. Especially now that I’m focusing on treating writing like my day job so it’ll become my day job, I’ve been keeping track.

And I have been busy: Since deciding last year to enter the Golden Heart, I’ve …

1. Revised Brad & Erin’s story and sent out several queries on it. (Received one nibble, which resulted in a rejection.)
2. Entered it in the Golden Heart, where it received solidly average scores.
3. Taken part in my first NaNoWriMo, writing about 25,000 words.
4. Finished the first draft of my first single-title length novel.
5. Edited it into a second draft, written a synopsis and query and submitted it to a handful of agents. (Two wanted to see more.)
6. Expanded Cassie and Dustin’s story to the proper length for category romance, editing and revising as I went along.
7. Done the same for Bree and Mike’s story.
8. Written about two-thirds of Meg and Matt, finishing a first draft.
9. Crafted the dreaded query and synopsis for Meg and Matt.
10. Started a second single-title story, a sequel to the first.

Wow, I have been busy. Four series manuscripts and one single-title … Now all I need to do is find someone who’s interested in publishing one — or all — of them.

Let the organizing continue! 😉