Writing Process

Have you ever wondered how long it takes a writer to bring her prose up to industry standards and get published? Well wonder no longer, for here, in excruciating detail, is just that. The writing classes, the years of revision, the writer’s conferences, the years and years and years of rejection. Yep, I recorded it all … well most of it. If you have a little time, then by all means, enjoy. To start at the beginning, scroll to the bottom.

Total Writing Hours To Date=10,793 hours and 29 minutes

This does not include all the writing I did from 1st grade to my second two-year distance course during Bible college. While, I didn’t record writing hours until 2003, these were still great learning years!

Total # of Manuscripts Written =36 (5 published, 2 self published, 28 unpublished)

(Romances = 6, Young Adult = 4, Middle Grade = 9, Chapter Books = 9, Picture Books=6, Board Books =3)

Poppy and the Old Oak Tree-Board Book version

Writing Hours for Poppy and the Old Oak Tree Board Book = 41 Hours 0 Minutes

April 11th to April 30th, 2023– An agent at the Vision Writers Conference was interested in seeing my PB manuscript Poppy and the Hollow Log. Through a long and painful revision process, I ended up abandoning that project. However, my writer friend’s advice and the work that I did were not wasted. After putting the picture book aside, again, I felt a nudge of hope. Was there any chance I could actually cut it enough to get this idea down to board book proportions? The answer, yes. Yes, I could. I took a hacksaw to the piece and while it is still on the largest end of the spectrum, the story is barely within board book word count. If nothing else happens, at least I have shown myself that I am capable of an incredibly tight word cut. Which is its own victory!

Summer 2023– I pitch this board book ms. at my local writers conference in June. The editor is interested and says to send it as is. Yay! She has seen multiple versions of the picture book and said she really loved it. However, what the editors love don’t always pass muster with the sales department. Perhaps this shorter version will be the one!

Courage Comes …

Writing Hours for Courage Comes = 18 Hours 15 Minutes

April 8th, 2023–The board book words are flowing and so I take my winning essay on courage and use it as a spring board to launch me into another board book manuscript. I write two couplets and ten more first lines, you know, the first part of a couplet. Will all those second lines come?

Summer 2023– I pitch the book at a writing conference in June and the editor requests it. However, she wants a few revisions before I send the story. So, I rework the board book over the summer and submit it on the 4th of July. We shall see what happens. But just hitting “send” is cause for celebration for sure.

Dogs Are Brave

April 8th, 2023–But what about the puppy? What is the puppy doing while Squirrel rampages in her house? And so, I begin another board book manuscript following a puppy’s travails as Squirrel learns his deep spiritual truth by ransacking her home.

God Made Squirrel

Writing Hours for God Made Squirrel = 32 Hours 25 Minutes

April 6th, 2023–I went to the Vision Christian Writer’s Conference asking God for direction. Should I let go of those 26 unpublished children’s manuscripts and concentrate on the camp blog or something else. I came home having won an award, with just a splash of hope and some board book ideas skittering around in my brain. I wrote the rough draft for God Made Squirrel  and it weighed in at 195 words.

April 7, 2023–I send my ms. to my critique partner and a mom of a toddler.

April 8th, 2023–A literary agent at the conference offered to glance over the project before I submit it and so I send it along to her. Yes, this is crazy fast. However, this idea just seems like a fast one. Squirrels are fast, after all.

Summer 2023— I do some revisions according to the literary agent’s critique and then I pitch the project at my local writers conference in June. The editor loves the story and asks me to submit. Once again, the waiting game begins!

Phooey Kerflooey and the Case of the Missing Puppies, Peoples, , Pork Rinds!

Writing Hours for PK and the Case of the Missing … Pork Rinds = 44 Hours 30 Minutes

March 5, 2023 to — After receiving a very complimentary rejection for my middle grade adventure Phooey Kerflooey vs. The Squirrel of the Apocalypse, I licked my wounds and then started rethinking the characters and setting. What if I took the characters and setting that I already loved … and wrote a new beginning for them? What if I wrote a mystery?!? I love mysteries. My dad used to tell us Green Meadow Rescue Society Mysteries when I was a girl and my brother and I loved them. Perhaps a mystery manuscript would give these fun characters another chance.

Phooey and Fancy Granny’s Fluffer

Writing Hours for Phooey and Fancy Granny’s Fluffer = 19 Hours  16 Minutes

November 25th to November 30th–At a loss for what to write to get my full 50,000 words, I spent a bit of time on Thanksgiving in between cooking turkey, mashed potatoes, and various side dishes to very very quickly outline a short chapter book. This one is from Phooey’s POV and involves her battle with Nia’s grandmother over a fur muff that both claim as their own.

Phooey Kerflooey vs The Vast and Tricksy Wild

Writing Hours for Phooey Kerflooey vs The Vast Wild = 37 Hours 58 Minutes

October 3rd 2021–In preparation for my 6th NaNoWriMo, I started outlining a middle grade novel where Marcus and Conner first settle into life at a camp and Phooey makes it her life goal to roll in a muddy elk wallow eight times a day. Yes, of course they get lost and it is Phooey’s muddy rolling that helps the boys to find their way home.

November 1st, 2021–After a virtual meeting with an editor during an online writer’s conference, I decided to write six chapter books instead of two middle grade manuscripts and two chapter books.

One Year Later …

November 15th to November 24th–For my seventh NaNoWriMo, I had two middle grade novels outlined. This one was a story I’d thought about writing last year, before I changed my mind to write chapter books. This year, I went over the outline and made a few changes and then wrote a 15,660 word rough draft in just nine days. It was much shorter than I expected and so I will probably have to go back during the editing stage to add more peril to the middle of the novel or stick in a fun plot thread.

Phooey Kerflooey vs The Darkening Forest

Writing Hours for Phooey Kerflooey vs The Darkening Forest = 129 Hours 32 Minutes

October 2022– I make an outline for my NaNoWriMo project.

November 1st to November 14th–I start my seventh NaNoWriMo by writing a 24,673 word rough draft of Phooey Kerflooey vs. The Darkening Forest.

January 2023–After a helpful critique of the first few pages, I jump back into this story by doing a simple clean up revision. Rough drafts that I write during NaNoWriMo have all kinds of simple errors in them. This first read through fixes many of those and gives me a chance to flesh out areas that are sparse or unengaging.

Poppy and the Hollow Log

Writing Hours for Poppy and the Hollow Log = 18 Hours 51 Minutes

September 2022– After the failed picture book manuscript from the summer, I concentrate on writing blogs for the camp where I work and stew about my picture book ideas. Then, when camp wraps up, I give it one more try. Well, make that two. I write two different picture books with this title. Then I decide that I like the old picture book that an editor loved but ultimately rejected better. After some sorrow and prayer over my story woes, I have a brilliant idea! Why not combine the picture books? So I use the first half of one of the new manuscripts and the middle and ending of the old manuscript, smash them together … and I have something that is far too large! So I cut, cut, cut and sent it out for critique and cut some more and finally end up with a picture book manuscript that I love.

September 23rd 2022– I submit Poppy and the Hollow Log to an editor who showed interest in my previous picture book manuscripts about grief.

October 7th, 2022–I receive a very kind rejection letter for the story. The publisher has already found the book on grief that they were looking for and do not want to publish a competing title. However, the editors gave me some suggestions for revision and encouraged me to continue looking for a home for the story as they felt that it had merit.

Poppy Puppy and the Summer Storm (or Poppy Puppy and the Storm of Trouble)

Writing Hours for Poppy Puppy and the Summer Storm= ???

After a twenty-year streak, I did a very poor job of keeping track of writing hours this summer.

June 25, 2022–While at a writer’s conference, I meet with the editor who was looking at two of my children’s manuscripts. She lets me know that while she loved my previous picture book about grief, the publishing house needs something that deals with grieving in general rather than death-specific grief. I immediately begin to have some new ideas.

June 28, 2022–I chat with my husband about both the encouraging and discouraging elements of the writer’s conference and he suggests writing a story that involves Poppy dealing with the smaller, everyday things that we grieve as a prequel to the book about death. He thinks that perhaps the story about Poppy facing death might get picked up if the story about her general grief goes over well. This gets me thinking in a new direction and I combine my new idea with his idea and start to outline a new picture book.

Summer of 2022– I write the new picture book. Get pretty excited about it. Sent it to some folks for critique. Analyze their critique … and realize that it is totally not going to work. Back to the drawing board!

Phooey and The Battle Squirrel

Writing Hours for Phooey and the Battle Squirrel: 95 Hours and 43 Minutes

Last week of October–After an online meeting with an editor, I decided to outline several more chapter books.

November 1st to November 3rd–I start out NaNoWriMo with a bang and write the rough draft of Phooey and the Battle Squirrel which finishes the story that began with Phooey and the Fancy, Fancy Teacup so that two chapter books span the time covered in the middle grade novel Phooey Kerflooey. 

December 13th to February 5th– I divide the story into fourths. Then I go through Stealing Hollywood: Screenwriting Tricks for Authors by Alexandra Sokoloff to make sure that each quarter of the story contains the elements that it should. Then I looked to see that each quarter was roughly the same size. They were not! The third quarter was half the size of the others. What to do? What to do? I opened up my draft of the middle grade story (Phooey Kerflooey) this is based on and discovered that I had completely forgotten to include the worst of the dark moment! I translated it into something that a puppy would worry about, wrote a new chapter, plopped it into the right spot and the word count added up. I also did a revision to make sure that the action matched up what was going on in Phooey Kerflooey just in case I get the chance to publish them both one day. Then I sent the whole thing to Jenn, my critique partner. Phew!

Phooey and The Deep, Deep Dark

Writing Hours for Phooey and the Deep Deep Dark: 16 Hours and 30 Minutes

Last week of October–After an online meeting with an editor, I decided to outline several more chapter books.

November 4th to November 7th–I write the rough draft of Phooey and the Deep, Deep Dark during my NaNo challenge.

Phooey and The Wonderful Wallow

Writing Hours for Phooey and the Wonderful Wallow: 37 Hours 32 Minutes

September 26, 2021–I started my NaNoWriMo prep early this year since I am hoping to fast-draft several short children’s books rather than one long one. I outlined a chapter book told from Phooey’s perspective about her important goal to roll in the murky elk wallow instead of learn obedience with her boys. But God even uses her disobedience to help Phooey and her boys learn about Him as the elk wallow plays a vital roll in keeping everyone alive when they become lost in the woods.

November 8th–November 16th 2021–During NaNoWriMo I jumped into something that I have never done before. Six short chapter book manuscripts instead of one long manuscript. I made this decision after a really cool meeting with an editor at a virtual writer’s conference. Since she was requesting chapter books, I went crazy writing chapter books. I finished Phooey and the Wonderful Wallow in eight days during a very difficult time. One of our beloved staff members, someone we had been mentoring for seven years, lost her battle with depression. This was so hard and I found that being creative when overwhelmed by grief is daunting. I took a break to work on my PB about grief and to write her obituary and then I slowly got back to writing chapter books.

Phooey and The Mountain of Yum

Writing Hours for Phooey and Mountain of Yum: 30 Hours and 59 minutes

October 24th 2021–In preparation for NaNoWriMo, I outline another chapter book that features Phooey’s battle with a grumpy circus pony over who will become the emperor of the compost heap!

November 17th to November 23rd, 2021–After going to a funeral and taking a bit of time, I jumped into writing the rough draft for this fun story.

Phooey and the Rowdy Ravens

Writing Hours for Phooey and the Rowdy Ravens: 8 Hours and 45 Minutes

November 24th to November 26th–Based loosely on some of our adventures this summer when some ravens got ahold of a box of cracker packets, I write this goofy story of Phooey solving the great cracker packet thief mystery.

Phooey and the Camper Chaos

Writing Hours for Phooey and the Camper Chaos: 12 Hours and 50 Minutes

November 27th 2001–I finish my 5th chapter book manuscript and am only at 45,156 words. The NaNoWriMo challenge is to write 50,000 words in a single month. Therefore, despite the insanity of attempting to do so, I write an outline for one more chapter book.

November 28th to November 30th–At the final hour of the NaNo challenge, I speed write the rough draft for Phooey and the Camper Chaos and finish up November having written 52,709 words spread out over six chapter book manuscripts.

Phooey Kerflooey vs. The Pyromaniac Pony

Writing Hours for Phooey vs. Pony: 12 Hours and 50 Minutes

October 10, 2021–In preparation for NaNoWriMo, I outline another middle grade novel that features Marcus and Conner trying to stop Phooey and a grumpy Shetland pony from disrupting a fancy Ladies Retreat luncheon. When disaster occurs, they seek to earn back their (and Phooey’s) good name by helping out a nice grandma lady. Only, she is a lot more of a handful to assist than the boys expected!

November 1st, 2021–After a virtual meeting with an editor during an online writer’s conference, I decided to write six chapter books instead of two middle grade manuscripts and two chapter books.

Poppy Puppy and The Old Dog

Writing Hours for Poppy Puppy and The Old Dog: 2 Hours 30 Minutes

November 30, 2020–Since I had one day left of NaNoWriMo and had finished all of my outlined projects, I decided to spend a day as a pantser (seat-of-the-pants-writer) and just write the rough draft of a picture book idea I’d had without any outlining or planning. This was based on something that really happened with our old Newfoundland Shamu and I’ve written a blog post about it, but have always wanted to incorporate it into a story. Shamu loved to nap on the ice on sunny days and when he was old, he would nap a lot. In the heat of the day, he chose a nice melting ice patch and settled down for his nap. He slept and slept and as the sun sunk behind the hills, the temperature dropped. The wet ice he was sleeping on froze again and Shamu’s fur was frozen solid to our driveway. We heard him give a bark or two and so my husband checked on him and discovered that he couldn’t move. He had to chip Shamu out of the ice until he could finally stand. But Shamu took one step and then stopped. Upon closer inspection, my husband saw that Shamu’s tail was still stuck to the ice. He chipped our old doggy free and we got him warmed up inside, but there were still bits of fur stuck in the ice to remind us of Shamu’s adventure. Of course Shamu did not stop napping on the ice until it all melted away. That was his favorite place to rest. I’m not sure if this will translate well into story or if it will even be believable, although it actually happened. But it was fun to write and at least I produced some words for NaNo on the last day of the month. The rough draft ended up at 1,205 words and after a bit of editing it grew to 1,306.

Poppy Puppy Says Goodbye

Writing Hours for Poppy Puppy Goodbye: 46 Hours 0 Minutes

November 28, 2020–As I am finishing my last rough draft (chapter book) for NaNoWriMo, I pause to listen to a podcast (The Christian Publishing Show) and hear an interview with an editor I’ve met with and submitted to before. She mentions that she would love a good children’s book about grief and my brain explodes with ideas. I write them down as fast as I can, finish the last few pages of my planned chapter book manuscript and then settle in to outline a picture book about grief. Since I have a couple of days left in November, I use my final NaNo hours to write the rough draft of a picture book. It is 996 words plus some Bible verses at the end.

December 1st to December 17th, 2020–I contact anyone who might possibly be able to read the story for me and end up sending it to Jenn, Jill, Sarah, Judy, Daryl, Cheryl, and Epona. They all get back to me with wildly divergent advice and I then attempt to revise using each of their wisdom while still maintaining my vision for the story. The word count goes up and down many times but ends up at 936 words plus Bible verses. Because it was something the editor was specifically looking for, I submit right away and hope for the best.

December 18th, 2020–The editor wrote back, gave me some encouraging feedback, and let me know that Poppy Puppy is under consideration!

October 22, 2021– I got the chance to talk with the editor at an online writer’s conference. She said that she didn’t think they could sell a book that showed dogs in heaven. However, she said that she loved the story and that she would be happy to look at a rewrite.

November 14, 2021– I was in the middle of furiously writing for NaNoWriMo when we received news that someone very close to us took their own life. I just couldn’t write the comedy stories that I had outlined for NaNo. I could write about grief, however. I opened up Poppy Puppy and cut the entire ending. I added 681 completely new words and edited like a mad woman. Then, I wrote our friend’s obituary, edited again, and submitted the revised picture book manuscript to the same editor.

June of 2022–After meeting with the editor who was looking at this story, I found out that while she loved the writing, their publishing house was looking for a broader treatment of grief in general rather than grief over a death. I was encouraged by the nice things she had to say about my writing though and got some good ideas for another picture book that might meet their needs. The saga continues as I start a new manuscript, Poppy Puppy and the Summer Storm.

Puppy Tales: Phooey and the Fancy, Fancy Teacup

Writing Hours for Phooey and the Fancy Teacup: 377 Hours 39 Minutes

October 1, 2020–Our own Newfoundland, Princess Leia Freyja refuses to drink unless the water is fresh and in her special mug. I used her picky quirk as a story spark for Phooey and the Fancy Teacup. Since I will need more projects to get to 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo, I outline three chapter books from Phooey’s perspective.

November 25th to November 28th, 2020–I finish the rough draft and it is the most concise chapter book manuscript yet, weighing in at 6,417 words and 29 manuscript pages.

March 21st 2021–After finally completing my lead magnets for the website, I jump back into Phooey’s adventures with my first edit.

August 12, 2021–Amidst camp photography and writing the camp blogs all summer, I finish up revisions 1-4 of this fun Phooey story. My critique partner Jenn read and responds, I divide the tale into fourths and edit them separately, and I make substantial edits to both this story and its middle grade companion Phooey Kerflooey to make sure that they mesh well. Phooey and the Fancy Teacup occurs during the middle of the action of Phooey Kerflooey only it is super short, for readers ages 6-10, and is told from the puppy’s POV.

September 12, 2021–I get feedback from Jenn and revise this story again. Plus, I attend an online writer’s conference in October and get some great ideas for revisions from the classes and a chance to talk with an editor about my writing.

November 2021–I get feedback from Sarah and her girls, from Mom, from Jill, and from Nicole and her girls.

December 3, 2021–I finish up revising according to feedback. Then I add a new chapter and do a read-through in a single morning cutting words and making the story easier to read. Then I submit the story to an editor I “talked” with at an online writer’s conference. We shall see what happens.

June 2022– I meet with the editor who was looking at this story and she lets me know that it wasn’t quite what they needed. Perhaps not quite high concept enough? I will have to rethink the story and see if there are ways that I can make it stand out.

Puppy Tales: Phooey and the Magic Window

Writing Hours for Phooey and The Magic Window: 19 Hours 35 Minutes

October 1, 2020–My husband forgot to tell the bank teller that our dog, Princess Leia Freyja is in the car and they don’t give her a bank cookie. After searching for her rightful treat and finding nothing, she refuses to look at him for the rest of the ride. This real life story sparks the idea for Phooey and the Magic Window, a tale about forgiveness. Since I will need more projects to get to 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo, I outline three chapter books from Phooey’s perspective.

November 21st to November 24th, 2020–I write the rough draft as part of my NaNoWriMo goals. I’m thrilled to complete the story in four days with 7,183 words and 31 manuscript pages.

Puppy Tales: Phooey and the Fake Bear

Writing Hours for Phooey and the Fake Bear: 25 Hours 52 Minutes

October 1, 2020–We have been owned by two different Newfoundland dogs and both of them have been mistaken for bears. Once or twice, a bear was mistaken for our dog. The bears do not come when you whistle at them, as my aunt found out, ha! I used these experiences to spark Phooey’s crazy story with the fake bear! Since I will need more projects to get to 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo, I outline three chapter books from Phooey’s perspective.

November 16th to November 20th, 2020–I write the rough draft of Phooey and the Fake Bear as part of my NaNoWriMo insanity! The rough draft is 7,206 words and 29 manuscript pages. I’m pretty proud of myself for finally being able to write a complete story (that’s not a PB) that is this short!

Phooey Kerflooey vs. Christmas

Writing Hours for Phooey vs. Christmas: 52 Hours 17 Minutes

October 1, 2020–For NaNoWriMo I decide to write a fourth middle grade novel with Phooey and her boys. I spend the month of October outlining their adventures. Since it has snowed over 24 inches this week, it is the perfect time to write about this big puppy princess and her very first Christmas. When our Newfoundland, Princess Leia Freyja, was a pup she knocked over our Christmas tree and broke several ornaments. I remember this well as it was only the second year that our sons didn’t knock over the Christmas tree and break ornaments. We had one safe year for our tree, and then along came the puppy princess! I used this adventure coupled with my husband’s disappointment of having his cocker spaniel eat all of the Christmas gifts (3 Giant Chocolate Bars!) he bought for his brother and sisters to make a crazy dog adventure.

November 1 to November 16, 2020–I write the rough draft of Phooey Kerflooey vs. Christmas and have a blast doing so. The manuscript weighs in at 32,058 words and 114 pages of crazy puppy fun!

Dandelion Floofums

Writing Hours for Dandelion Floofums: 164 Hours 7 Minutes

October, 2019–In preparation for NaNoWriMo, I outline two new stories. A RomCom featuring escaped pet chickens and a middle grade companion story from the view point of Dandelion Floofums, a beloved pet hen.

November 22nd to November 30th, 2019–I’ve always loved the idea of Moms and kids reading together and I thought perhaps I would write a middle grade companion story to my RomCom Chicken Crossing. This story follows the adventures of the beloved pet chicken, Dandelion Floofums, as the heroine of the other story is attempting to find her! I wrote the rough draft of this crazy idea during NaNoWriMo 2019. This was my most ambitious NaNo yet as my goal was 50,000 words and two new manuscripts. I went a wee bit crazy, but did it! I finished the rough draft of Dandelion Floofums on November 30th and it weighed in at 14,292 words. Don’t worry, it will get bigger as I revise.

July 26 to August 1st, 2020–For Camp NaNoWriMo 2020 I decided to do a complete revision of both Chicken Crossing and Dandelion Floofums. The middle grade story from the chicken’s perspective and the RomCom didn’t completely match up plot-wise as the stories take on a life of their own during the writing process. I went through Dandelion Floofums, smoothing the writing and fixing the plot holes and generally reconnecting myself with the story. Amazingly, I only added 123 words to the story during this edit, but the plot is definitely better for the effort.  It is now 14,415 words long. Strangely, this quick edit took almost the same amount of time as writing the rough draft. Rough draft = 12 hours and 27 minutes, first edit = 11 hours and six minutes. Writing is such a strange process.

January 2021–After revising Chicken Crossing several times, I went through Dandelion Floofums simplifying the language and making sure that the plot closely follows that of its companion story. It is now 15,679 words long. On a fun note, I worked with a cover artist and absolutely adore the end product! Cute, exciting, and fun!

February 2021–I sent Dandelion Floofums off to my critique partner, Jenn. When I got her suggestions back, I revised again, smoothing out the language, fixing more time and story errors, and adding a heroic moment for Porky the rooster. The story is now 17,045 words long and sits firmly between chapter book and middle grade novel lengths.

March 2021–I get feedback from Sarah and her daughters. It is super fun to hear how the girls enjoyed the story and all the places where they laughed. Sarah gives me some good feedback about what portions of the story were confusing or slipped into having narration rather than a close POV for Floofums. I set out to revise again. The story ends up at 17,530 words.

March 17, 2021 —I begin the publication process and eventually have Dandelion Floofums available in paperback and Kindle on Amazon as well as in ebook form at Barnes and Noble and Kobo. This takes forever but was an amazing learning process and finally, finally, finally, I get my first children’s book up on my website to give away to newsletter subscribers!

Chicken Crossing

Writing Hours for Chicken Crossing: 275 Hours 37 Minutes

October, 2019–I begin outlining another RomCom and and this time, I am determined to use some of our fun chicken stories that our family has accrued after owning so many delightful pet hens. Specifically, that time my middle son sent me down to the neighbors coop after he accidentally left King there during a visit. My only instructions, pat King firmly on the back and she will give a “honking cluck” every time I pat her. This was how I was to identify this special hen. Of course, after my heroine swerves to miss a bear and crashes, scattering 15 hens across a mountain pass, she will have to hunt high and low to find every beloved chicken. Yes, I think that one of them will take refuge in a coop full of identical hens and she will have to use the “honking cluck” method of finding just the right hen!

November 1st to November 21st, 2019–I write the rough draft of Chicken Crossing for NaNoWriMo. Chicken Crossing weighs in at 40,127 words. Combined with the 14,292 words from Dandelion Floofums, its middle grade companion story, I surpass my 50,000 word goal and purchase a charming NaNoWriMo t-shirt for myself as a celebratory prize!

June 21st to August 19th, 2020– For Camp NaNoWriMo 2020, I determine to get through an edit of both Chicken Crossing and Dandelion Floofums in the month of July. After the July edit, I go back and fix additional plot holes as well as working on my heroine’s spiritual journey and internal character arch. Interestingly, it took 81 hours and 48 minutes to write the rough draft of Chicken Crossing and 100 hours and 7 minutes to complete these two fairly simple revisions. Although, I did add quite a bit of material with the booby traps that the children were setting up around their mountain cabin. My brother and I actually had our own booby traps as kids, which our mother forced us to dismantle for fear of injuring some random hiker. So I wanted to do them justice, in honor of those long ago bits of childish ridiculousness! The story is now 46,534 words long, so yeah, I added 6,407 words in just two passes through the story.

December 2020 and January 2021 —I revise the story one more time and then send it to Jenn, Jill, and Heather. When I get feedback from them, I revise one time for each of their critiques. Once finished, the story weighs in at 49,275 words. My husband buys me a fabulous book cover for Christmas and I work with a cover artist using photos that I took of a chicken sitting on one of our camp intern’s head! It turns out super-cute. I revise to make sure that the story follows the chicken’s adventures in Dandelion Floofums. I send the manuscript to Sarah for a final polish!

January 2021 to February 2021–I get the story back from Sarah and make the last few changes to bring my manuscript to its highest sheen. Then I jumped into the terrifying world of self-publishing! I wrote this as a lead magnet for my website to give away to newsletter subscribers and so I have to publish it myself so that I retain the rights. I had previously self-published a paperback for my grandfather and so the paperback formatting on Amazon goes fairly quickly. However, I have never formatted ebooks and end up spending an incredible amount of time doing so. As Shelby would say, Argh!!! After formatting the Nook book 21 times and then previewing my story 21 times on Barnes and Noble’s handy previewer, I finally get it right. Then I must format for Kobo and Kindle, but after all of my previous work, this turns out to be easier. I have some issues with getting the cover image to load on Barnes and Noble but eventually get the ebook up on all three sites and the paperback up on Amazon. Then it’s time to figure out how to give the book away on my website. This was harder than I anticipated as I didn’t know the jargon and therefore had no idea what words to plug into Google. Finally, I got the ebook converted to an epub file and a mobi file that I can give away. The PDF was easy to convert. I tested the epub file on my Nook and ended up formatting four more times before it read correctly. Then I converted to a mobi file again and send that to Nicole who loaded it onto her Kindle and checked out how it read. All was well! Thankfully, Tony offered to help me get my lead magnet up on the website and so I ordered a box of books for myself while I wait for his assistance. The final word count is 49,948!

Phooey Kerflooey vs. The Cushy Comforts of the New Couch

Writing Hours for Phooey vs. Couch: 37 hours 51 minutes

October and November 2018– I outline two new Puppy Princess books and for NaNoWriMo I write the first draft for both Phooey #2 and Phooey #3. I “win” NaNo 2018 with 60,008 words written in one month, a personal best!

Writing Process for Phooey Kerflooey vs. The Vacuum of Doom

Writing Hours for Phooey vs. Vacuum of Doom: 108 hours 33 minutes

October and November 2018– I write the outlines for two new Phooey Kerflooey books and for NaNoWriMo I write the rough draft of Phooey #2 Phooey Kerflooey vs. The Vacuum of Doom! I “win” NaNo 2018 with 60,008 words written in one month, a personal best!

January 27, 2019–February 21, 2019–I revise The Vacuum of Doom in several ways, including dividing the story into four parts and making sure that each segment was the proper length and had the right elements for that part of the story. I used the craft book, Stealing Hollywood by Alexandra Sokoloff.

Writing Process For The Princess and The Cheez-it

Writing Hours for The Princess and the Cheez-it: 12 hours 2 minutes

April 28, 2018-May 3, 2018 –So I’ve had this story idea tumbling around in my head that my youngest son suggested when our Newfoundland dog was digging furiously to get a bag of Cheez-its that we had in a backpack during a hike. The Princess and the Cheez-it … just like The Princess and the Pea … pretty much. Our Newfoundland was also very concerned when my older son and I dropped a mattress on top of my youngest. Don’t worry, he’s OK. She jumped on top and started digging to save him (which of course just smooshed him further) and the whole mattress thing fit in so well with the princess and the pea that I couldn’t resist. I was supposed to be working on The Yellowstone Romance, but editing is hard and so I kept rewarding myself for making it through editing a chapter by allowing myself to work on a picture book manuscript for The Princess and the Cheez-it. It worked so well that I might also write a chapter book that fleshes out the same story. So, yep. I finished a rough draft of The Princess and the Cheez-it and sent it to two friends who were willing to test it out on their small children. Then I took it through four revisions. My young critique experts informed me that the best part was when the puppy peed in the car! Good to know.

March 2019–I made additional changes, but failed to write down my writing hours specific to this story. Oops!

Writing Process For Yellowstone Yondering

Writing Hours for Yellowstone Pure Amore = 509 hours and 54 minutes

March 2017– During CamasCon, the board game camp that my husband runs and my children love to attend,  I spend my hours curled up on the camp couch plotting out stories. I complete the detailed plot maps for four different books, one of which was a romance set in Yellowstone National Park where our family vacationed/adventured last summer.

April–May 2017– I complete the rough draft for this comedic romance that I hope to sell to Pelican Book Group for their Pure Amore line. It was currently 31,248 words and 112 pages long.

February 11, 2018–I start revision #1 of The Yellowstone Adventure while I wait to hear back about interviewing wheelchair athletes for Puppy Princess. My first step was to decide if I’m going to use an alternating hero/heroine POV for the first time. I wrote maybe one chapter from the guys’s POV as an experiment, but then fell back into my standard heroine’s perspective during the speed writing of the rough draft. If so, I need to decide where to add the man’s perspective and then write those chapters. After looking at the story again, I write eleven new chapters (some of them quite short) from the guy’s perspective. I have never done this before, but I think that Alexander will add something important to this story. The story was now 38,945 words and 145 pages long.

March 8, 2018– During revision #2, I use Alexandra Sokoloff’s book, “Screenwriting Tricks for Authors” again to divide the plot into the basic 3 Act, 4 quarter, 8 segments. I pull each quarter into its own new document and revise each quarter to make certain that it has the elements it needs that are commonly found in that portion of a book or movie. Also, I want to try to make each quarter about the same size to balance out the story.

April 1, 2018–I then revise the whole thing trying to fix the romance, make it funnier, and add spiritual insights without increasing the word count. Ugh!

April 25, 2018–My amazing critique partner, Jenn, tells me to go ahead and send the ms. to her, even though she is crazy busy. She’s amazing! Also, she notices all sorts of things that I do not and the story begins to improve at a marvelous rate.

August 2, 2018– I finally finish up Furbaby Foibles, as I am now calling The Yellowstone Adventure and send it in to my editor! We shall see what she thinks of it.

January 6, 2019–February 30, 2019–I get edits back and jump into revisions. My editor wanted to name the story Yellowstone Yearning, but we finally compromise on Yellowstone Yondering. In a misguided attempt to raise the stakes for poor Kayla, I had the bear snork down a couple of random dogs in the park. My editor informed me that as soon as a dog dies, you are no longer writing a romance! It took some getting used to, but I realized that she was right and I needed to make sure that if I promised a romantic comedy, that I didn’t break faith with the reader in any way. So I saved the dogs and made some other changes as well.

October 2019–I also make changes according to suggestions from wonderful Yellowstone Romance author Karen Barnett!

January, 2020–Yellowstone Yondering is published with Pelican Book Group as my fifth novella!

Writing Process for Phooey Kerflooey

Writing Hours For Phooey Kerflooey vs. The Squirrel of the Apocalypse

= 563 hours and 13 minutes

March 2017— After much urging from my three offspring, I plot out three Puppy Princess chapter books. Tales that are loosely based upon the antics of our second Newfoundland dog, Princess Leia Freyja Wilks. They grow way past chapter book size and all become middle grade novels.

April 2017— My intention was to make April my own personal NaNoWriMo month this year and complete three separate rough drafts for three Puppy Princess books. What actually happens was that yes, I make my goal of 30,000 words, but no I do not complete three manuscripts. I do, however complete one rough draft for a Puppy Princess book and a third of the rough draft for another romance. Not too shabby with all that was going on in April. After asking advice of a publishing pro, reading up on chapter books, and thinking and praying, I decide that it will be a middle grade novel rather than a chapter book.

January 21, 2018–After using what I learned in “Screenwriting Tricks for Authors” by Alexandra Sokoloff to improve LMR during October–January, I take my outline of Puppy Princess and divide it into the 3 Act 8 Segment structure that she explains so well. Then I made a revision list for each of the 4 sections. I pull out each of the four quarters and put them into four separate documents for revision. I use the book to see what each quarter should contain and revise accordingly, adding depth and words and smoothing out the writing and fixing broken plot threads. I hope to have it finished enough so that I can read it to the boys, as they are so excited about this one.

February 10, 2018–During revision #1 of Puppy Princess, I added 10,375 words to the story. Pushing it into the middle grade age range for sure. (It started out as a chapter book idea) Now that the story was more solid. I am seeking interviews with wheelchair athletes and occupational therapists who work with active folks in wheelchairs. I wish to deepen Conner’s character and put in some real life details before I jump into another revision. The story stands at 29,907 words and 107 pages including acknowledgments and a “What’s Real in The Story” segment that I thought would be fun. As I wait to hear back about interviews, I’m jumping into revising that Yellowstone romance that I wrote last year intending to submit to Pelican as a Pure Amore.

September 30, 2018– I Continue to revise PP#1 naming it Phooey Kerflooey vs. The Squirrel of the Apocalypse. 

October 27, 2018– I Revise Phooey Kerflooey again and write a proposal for the story.

December 2, 2019–December 30, 2019–I work on creating and play testing the card game that my boy heroes make and play during their adventures in Phooey Kerflooey vs. The Squirrel of the Apocalypse. Later, I even get to play it with various staff and campers as well as my sons’ friends!

March 2019–More revisions for Phooey Kerflooey!

April 14, 2019–June 1, 2019–And back to revising Phooey Kerflooey.

August 20 to October 4, 2020–After taking a break from the story, I realize that my first page has far too much backstory and so I must have started chapter one in the wrong spot. I go back and write a new chapter one and chapter two so that some of that backstory happens in real time. Since this involves a battle with an invading squirrel, it ends up being really fun! I also go through the whole story (revision #5) before sending it to a literary agent who is giving me a critique. Phooey Kerflooey now weighs in at 41,600 words which is getting a bit long for what I wanted.

January 2021–A new writer friend whom I met at a writer’s retreat in August offered to look at my story. So I spend a week and about twenty writing hours going over the manuscript one more time before I send it to her for a peek. I add a bit more description to the new chapters at the beginning, smooth the transition to the old material, and comb through the entire manuscript for plot inconsistencies and any way I can make the story shine just a little bit brighter. I send the story off to her in March and hope for the best.

May 8, 2022 to June 23, 2022–In preparation for pitching this story at a writer’s conference, I go back and do a couple more revisions. One to simplify the story so that it is more clearly about a boy and his dog and one to change the spiritual journey and theme to be more about finding peace when your world is in chaos than about facing your giants.

June 29, 2022 to October 5th 2022 —After chatting with the editor at the writer’s conference, I get a request to submit this story, yay! I still need to finish my edit on the spiritual theme and I decide to change one of my side characters substantially after talking with industry pros at the conference. I want this story just right before I submit. I zero in on my new theme and cut, cut, cut anything that has to do with previous themes. After working on picture books most of the summer, I find that I have new and ferocious powers to cut out the excess and end up deleting 2,121 words and getting the story down to 41,369 words total during revision #10.

October 5th to 26th–However, I decide that I need just one more revision before I actually submit this manuscript to the editor who requested it. I know, groan. But I want it to be perfect! Or at the very least, as perfect as I can make it. I go through it again, focusing on making sure that I have a new paragraph whenever I have a new character doing something, adding more Shakespearian insults to the middle, and focusing on Phooey’s fearfulness as causing trouble with her relationship with the boys rather than her love of the color pink (a color she isn’t supposed to even be able to see). As my own boys pointed out, “Why would anyone not want a princess puppy? We love our princess puppy!” A hair bow isn’t nearly as upsetting as a pup who pees when she is afraid and runs from wheelchairs and squirrels! OK, make that three more revisions! I send the story to my critique partner one more time. My story is now 42,797 words long and revision #13 is something I’m proud of. I submit the story to an interested editor on the morning of October 26th and prepare myself to wait.

Spider Gap–A Pure Amore Romance

Writing Hours For Spider Gap–244 hours and 20 minutes

December 2015–My editor-in-chief calls me up and asks if I am interested in writing a book for Pelican’s Pure Amore imprint. I have no idea what I would write, but tell her that I would love to if I can come up with a good idea for a Pure Amore story. I bring it before the Lord and tell Him that I would love to write this book, but don’t have any story spark. By the end of the day I e-mail Nicola back with my plan and she loves it. I am always amazed, every time, when God shows His tender care and interest in the small daily struggles that we face. Thank you Lord for sparking this story in my mind and heart. I only pray that I can do it justice.

January 2016–I brainstorm on the story idea, decide on my 15 plot points, and write up a chapter by chapter outline. Although I went on this hike as a teen, I also spend some time researching the area so that my impressions of this beautiful wilderness hike are fresh.

February 2016–I sign up for ACFW’s novel track for the month of February with a goal of 30,000 and the intention to write my entire rough draft in a single month. I finish on the last day of February with 33,378 words and a complete rough draft!

April 2016–I begin revisions using helpful critique notes from my mom, Johnnie Sue, and my critique partner Jenn.

June 1, 2016–I send Spider Gap in to my editor although it was 501 words too big. Hopefully in the editing process we can hash that out, but I wanted to submit on the day that I said I would rather than wait until the word count was perfect. My ending word count was 45,501.

October 2016–I get edits back from my editor and have 20 days to go over what she changed and change those changes into something that works for both of us but in my voice. I also add a recipe for the cookies that appeared in the story…because who doesn’t want to bake cookies after reading a good book?

Writing Process For MG Adventure–The Deep

Writing Hours For The Deep–102 hours and 28 minutes

October 2015–I outline the second book in the Wandering Wood series preparing myself for NaNoWriMo

November 2015–I attempt NaNoWriMo for the second time using ACFW Novel Track to keep track of my words rather than the official NaNo site. this year I set my goal for 50,000 words instead of 30,000 and with heart pounding once again attempt what feels like the impossible. Despite the crazy pace, I finish my rough draft on the last day of the month with 50,455 words.

Writing Process For Destination Romance—Ocean Shores Salvage

Writing Hours for Ocean Shores Salvage—56 hours 7 minutes

July 2015—I outline my story

August 1^st 2015—I start my rough draft and hope to finish it in September

September 30, 2015–I finish the rough draft of Ocean Shores Salvage at 31,323 words. I will take a break from this story and do something else so that I can come back and edit with fresh eyes.

Writing Process for The Volk Advent

Writing Hours For Siberian Christmas Novella–214 hours 14 minutes

January 2015–I outline the story using Blake Snyder’s “Save the Cat” and chapter outlining.

February 1-February 28th 2015–I write the rough draft keeping track of my words with ACFW’s Novel Track Writing group. I set a goal of 20,000 words and end the story at over 30,000 words.

April 1st to April  2015–I revise my story with the goal of submitting it to Jamie my editor at Pelican by May 1st.

August 26, 2015—I receive a book contract in my inbox for The Volk Advent. this was the first book that I have written all on my own, without any feedback. I am really nervous, but since it was a Christmas title with a firm deadline no one could look at it for me in time. I’m so glad that I have an editor and so thrilled that they love it.

September 22, 2015—I send in my first set of edits for The Volk Advent and realize that I have the absolute most gorgeous cover in the world!

October–I get my galleys and go over my book painstakingly line by line while The Hunky Hubby reads it for the first time and notices important things like where I said “headless” instead of “heedless”. Thank you, Hunky Hubby!!! I also make changes to my hero’s dialogue and balancing out his use of Russian phrases that I gleaned from a really cool documentary on trappers in Siberia, making sure that they were sprinkled evenly throughout. I fixed my wolf howling scene on the first page and probably drove my editor insane, but I am pleased with the finished product and so all that fiddling was worth it. At least I think so.

Middle Grade NaNoWriMo–The Wandering Wood

Writing Hours for The Wandering Wood–1,425 hours and 57 minutes

Step by Step

October 17th –October 20th 2014–I take twelve hours of writing time and completely outline my first middle grade novel ms. I use Blake Snyder’s 15 point outline as well as Larry Brooks book on Story Engineering. Then I make a chapter outline. I decide on 30 chapters and I have a goal, conflict, disaster, plus a physical and mental reaction and decision for each chapter

November 1st–November 24th–I write the rough draft of the middle grade story. I finish the last chapter at 42,759 words and 160 pages.

November 25th–November 30th–I work on revising the story to try to get it up to the NaNoWriMo length of 50,000 words. Even though I do my own unofficial NaNoWriMo with the ACFW Novel Track group, I want to reach that 50,000 word goal that I have been dreaming of attempting for over a decade. I revise about half of the story and add a few new scenes and finish the month over my goal, at about 50,200 words.

December 1st–December 2nd–I want to finish my first revision of the manuscript before putting it away for awhile so that I can look at it with fresh eyes when I come back. I finish my first revision and the ms. was now 50,703 words and 188 pages long. Now I’m going to set it aside and concentrate on revising my Athens novella idea. Once I submit that story, I will return to this ms. and revise until the writer’s conference in May where I hope to pitch it to agents and editors.

December 16, 2014–I start my second revision of the middle grade NaNoWriMo ms. this time I use the Donald Maass book “Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook”. The story ends up at over 52,000 words.

March 2015–I revise according to Sarah’s notes on the manuscript.

April 2015– I revise according to the feedback from Mom and Johnnie Sue.

May 2015–I read the story aloud to my three boys and revise after finding places with awkward phrases or spots where the story lags. When I finish each chapter, I ask them for suggested changes and revise according their ideas.

August 2015—I revise again and enter the story in Pitch Wars. I am not chosen, but cut out a bunch of useless words and have a great idea to strengthen the internal stakes because of feedback on my query that a mentor gave me.

October 15, 2015–October 30, 2015– I revise according to the feedback from Pitch Wars, deepening the inner stakes and polishing the prose. I finish with the ms. at 51,226 words and 195 pages.

December 2015–I receive some helpful feedback from a literary agent about my story. Due to her comments I make a list of changes regarding foreshadowing and mystery in the early chapters and decide to revise every page of my manuscript using the “tension on every page” writing exercise from Writing The Breakout Novel Workbook by Donald Maass. Once the revision was finished, I send the first chapters to Jenn, my critique partner, and start revision #9 according to her feedback as well as using the helpful ideas that came to me in the middle of the night and ideas I had while praying for ideas.

January 2016–After hearing back from Jenn about chapters 5-8, I set out to revise the whole manuscript (ch. 1 through ch. 33) again. Finally, I complete revision #10 by the end of the month. The ms. has increased in length by 5,578 words between these last too revisions. It was now 56,804 words long and has much more tension.

March 2016–I set out to revise the ms. “one more time” before I resubmit to a literary agent who suggested that I send the story back to her after my revisions. I sent the first three chapters to The Hunky Hubby and revise according to his suggestions. I attempt to get into a free “first five pages” class online. I work on my first five pages for several days, even starting out with a blank document and rewriting some of it. I do not get into the class (it filled up in under 60 seconds and my e-mail has a 3 minute delay on deliveries) but my pages are greatly improved through the exercise. I resend the first 73 pages of the story to Jenn and get feedback once again. Then I send her the first 5 pages that I just redid for the class that I failed to get into. Now, with Jenn’s notes in hand, I set out to make this story shine like a laser-eyed robot of destruction that has just driven through a radioactive wasteland! Or something like that . . . . Now, I organize my “WW Revision” file so that the I can go through the manuscript three different times, once for the three different protagonists. I have a list of revisions for each protagonist. And finally, I revise according to the ideas that don’t fit in with one of my three heroes but are for improving the general story. Then I let the Hunky Hubby read the first 5 pages and realize that I have actually made them worse. I change the opening back to something between the old and new first five pages and feel that I arrive at something that was better than either. I resubmit to the agent who told me to submit again if I revised and hope for the best. The story was now 59,893 words long.

September 9, 2016– I receive another rejection from the agent that I like. She felt that I ruined my great beginning from the other draft she saw and need a stronger character goal to get my main characters motivated. I take her Udemy class online on plotting and revise the story then let it sit while I work on something else.

October 10, 2017–At the recommendation of Jenn, my critique partner, I purchase Screenwriting Tricks for Authors by Alexandra Sokoloff. The author teaches the classic three act (4 part) plot but then further divides it into 8 segments giving each quarter of the story two distinct parts. this book was fabulous for breaking a story down into manageable chunks. I keep hearing that my writing was wonderful and my voice was great but that either the plot doesn’t work or the characters are not sufficiently motivated. I break The Wandering Wood into 4 quarters and revise each quarter separately, making sure that each one contains the necessary plot elements for that part of a film/book. Then I put the newly revised quarters back together and go through the whole thing again. this was my 10th revision of this story. I then submit The Wandering Wood to an editor whom I met and pitched to at the ACFW conference. The story was now 58,605 words long.

March 17, 2019–April 13, 2019–More revisions for The Wandering Wood.

June 2, 2019–September 30, 2019–So so much revising!

November 2, 2019–A Christian literary agent whom I’ve been submitting to for years offered to read The Wandering Wood and give me feedback. We begin working on the story together, chapter by chapter.

January 30, 2020– I receive a request to send a full manuscript and proposal of The Wandering Wood to my very favorite publisher, one that I pitched to at the Oregon Christian Writer’s Summer Conference. I hold off on sending as I am still revising according to feedback from my agent mentor.

March 30, 2020–Since it is taking my mentor and I so long to make our way through the story, I submit a partial (6 chapters and a proposal) to the publisher who requested. I let them know that if they want to see more, I will submit the full manuscript without further delay.

June 15, 2020–As I continue to revise feverishly, I also send The Wandering Wood to a published author who might be able to give me an endorsement or at the very least, a few pro tips for my story.

Writing Process for Athens Romance Novella—Athens Ambuscade

Writing Hours for Athens Romance–191 hours and 25 minutes

Step by Step

September 1, 2014–I start plotting out the story.

September 6, 2014–I start writing the rough draft.

October 14, 2014–I finish the rough draft at 24,901 words.

October 20, 2014–I start my first revision. I finish the first revision at 27,442 and 105 pages.

December 16, 2014–I finish the second revision at 30,117 words and 116 pages. I use “Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook” by Donald Maass and some interviews of people who have visited or live in Athens.

March 2015—I finally submit this manuscript to Jamie West my editor.

July 2, 2015—I receive a contract in my inbox from Pelican Book Group for Athens Ambuscade!

August 7, 2015—I send in my first round of edits to Jamie West, my editor.

December, 2015–I go over my Galleys making all of the last minute changes required. Then the publisher website eats my changes and so I do those Galleys again. At least the first 2/3rd. I saved the last bit in a Word document when our internet went down. Now I know to save the whole thing in a Word document and not just on the website.

Writing Process for Denmark Romance Novella “Copenhagen Cozenage”

Writing Hours for Denmark Romance–371 hours and 58 minutes

Step by Step

January 27, 2014—I spend a week researching and making my outline according to the “Story Engineering” writing book by Larry Brooks and the 15 beats outline from the blog “savethecat.com”

February 3, 2014–I start writing my rough draft and doing more research along the way.

February 28, 2014–I finish my rough draft. It was 23,108 words long. The finished product has to be between 30,000 and 35,000 words so that only leaves me about 12,000 words in which to make the story good. I only have 6 weeks to revise until the writer’s conference. this was the idea of a crazy person…but it’s also a lot of fun.

March 12, 2014–I finish my first revision of the romance novella. For this pass through I worked on smoothing out the pacing and action so that my character didn’t just jump from one thing to the next but actually had transitions. I also added some details about the setting and tried to make the mystery make more sense and add a bit more romantic tension. My manuscript was now 27,568 words in length which puts it very close to the required 30,000 words. My concern now was that I’ll go over the word limit as I continue to revise. Only four more weeks to make it good!

April 6, 2014–I have gone through the manuscript one more time and smoothed out any awkward areas. I made Morgan have more interactions with her cousin and added a chapter about the crown jewels. Then I fixed the dark night of the soul so that it tied into the beginning better and worked on moving backstory around in the first chapter so that it wasn’t so clunky. My word count was now 31,927. Hopefully I am getting close. The conference was only 4 days away!

April 14, 2014–After listening to the editor’s lecture at the conference, I go through the ms. one more time trying to revise it according to what I learned.

April 25, 2014–After pitching my ms. at the conference and having the editor request a full, I finish listening to a vampire book on my drive home from the conference. The book was not a strict romance, more of a “girl kicks vampire butt” kind of story. But the “slow burn” romance within the story worked really well. So I went through the entire novel and wrote down all of the parts that had the hero doing something to make the romance progress. After making this document I looked it over and noticed 4 things that the author employed regularly. She had her descriptions of the hero scattered through the book and they had something to do with the action at hand, the hero was calm and had a plan in stressful crazy situations when everyone else was panicked, the hero put the heroine’s interests ahead of his own getting her coffee and taking care of her wounds and worrying for her, and the hero sacrificed for the heroine. Then I started a revision where I am trying to add some of these elements to my own romantic novella. The ms. was now 33,722 words long. I also send more chapters of it to Jenn my critique partner and revise accordingly. After Revising the whole thing with Jenn the novella gets up to about 35,800 words. I then have to cut.

July 26, 2014–I get a contract offer in my inbox from Nicola Martinez at Pelican Book Group.

July 27, 2014–I ask an agent who has my Nineveh ms. if she would like to represent this. She declines, but gives me an idea of how to revise the beginning so that it was better. I revise accordingly.

July 30, 2014–I sign the contract and mail it off to Pelican. Copenhagen Cozenage was sold!

August of 2014–I begin revisions with editor Jamie West.

August 17, 2014—I send in the first official revision to Jamie West.

August 19, 2014–Jamie West e-mailed me back. I made a whole new document for my revisions. I have to do it on the document that they have in Track Changes. I made 3,000 to 4,000 words worth of changes with my critique partner since I first submitted this and now I have to do them all over again in Track Changes on the document that I sent to Pelican back in April. Lots of work ahead of me doing this all over again. Argh! Now I know how to do it right at least.

August 29, 2014—I get my official cover images from Nicola Martinez!

September 1, 2014—I send in the revised first official revision of Copenhagen Cozenage to Jamie West.

October 8, 2014–I send in my second official revision of Copenhagen Cozenage to Jamie West.

September 25, 2015—Copenhagen Cozenage was released, just fourteen years and six months after I started seriously trying to get published!

Writing Process for Forsaking The Call

Inspiring Music: Devotion–by The Newsboys, Mess of Me–by Switchfoot

Writing Hours for F.T.C.–109 hours and 2 minutes 

Step by Step

 March 11, 2011–May 20, 2011–I make a writing process page on my website for book #2 in the LMR series and decide to begin work on the next book while I await final feedback from Sarah and Rolana. My first step was to work on a “Snowflake” for FTC.

February 9, 2012–March 2012–I finally stop revising Overturned and LMR and get back to making my snowflake.

After reviewing my plot…I totally give up on this story.

Writing process for Losing My Religion

Inspiring Music: Devoted by The Newsboys, Grace Like Rain

Writing Hours for L.M.R. 2,020 hours and 35 min.

# of Teen Books Read for Research 122.3 (I lost count)

# of Non-Fiction Research Sources 7

# of Interviews Conducted 5

1. December 15, 2008–I finally put Overturned behind me and start on my next book idea, L.M.R.
2. December 15, 2008– I made a “Writing Process” section for L.M.R. on my website and start researching ancient Mexico.
3. December 15, 2008–February 8, 2009–I researched the people and architecture of Ancient Mexico. The Mayan people and the cities of Tulum and Chichen Itza in particular.
4. February 09, 2009—March 25, 2009–I researched modern Mexico. The area around Cancun and the sacred wells in particular. I buy three books about Mexico. One field guide on plants and animals of the Maya, one field guide on plants and animals of southern Mexico, and Cancun and the Yucatan for Dummies. I also create a culture document that has sections for everything that I think I will need to know (caves, kids, clothing, food…) and I find something or many somethings to put into each category of my document. I spend a week putting all of the ideas that I’ve been scribbling on random pieces of paper into the appropriate files on my computer. There were 87 papers total in my stack but some papers had more than one idea for more than one book on them.
5. March 26, 2009–July 17, 2009 I find pictures that look like all of my characters, pick names for them on SocialSecurity.com, and do a combination of the outlining exercises from “The Snowflake Guy” and Jim Butcher’s LiveJournal. this leaves me with several pages of description for each character and a chapter outline that has a scene for each chapter with the goal, conflict, and disaster. Plus a sequel for each chapter that was broken down into the emotional reaction, thinking and reasoning reaction, anticipation, and a decision. Then I take my 26 pages of single spaced typed notes from my ideas file for this story and plug them into the chapter outline in a hopefully successful order. I simplify my chapter outline into spreadsheet form with a row for each scene and a column for: goal, conflict, setback, emotional reaction, logic, anticipation, and choice. Then I spend a week redoing the “Setback” column because it inexplicably disappeared from my finished document. Finally the outlining process was complete.
6. July 20, 2009–September 23, 2009  I write my rough draft of LMR. On average I write about five chapters a week. I don’t stop to fix things. 61,264 words, 228 pages.
7. September 24, 2009–December 21, 2009  I write a prologue and make a calendar for putting story events onto during revision. Then I begin revising each chapter according to a 23 point revisions list that I made up of flaws that I had already spotted in my story. I revise about four chapters a week, spending one writing day revising the four chapters that I had revised the week before. this will make all of my story threads solid and the manuscript complete before I get into revisions based on books and things. this takes my word count up to 73,847 and page count to 270.
8. January 1, 2010–April 17, 2010 I revise my novel using “Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook” by Donald Maass. It has 34 chapters, each of which has at least one exercise to complete. I do almost all of the chapters. I don’t add plot threads or subplots though, since my manuscript was quite long enough. There was even a chapter on constructing your pitch for your query letter. I am saving the “tension on every page” chapter for when I do a paragraph by paragraph edit later in the year. this book has three main sections: Character Development, Plot Development, and General Story Techniques. After spending over 3 months working on this I have made vast improvements in all three areas. Now I’m at a whopping 85,292 words and 307 pages.
9. April 21st 2010–I sent eight pages of dialogue from various characters to my wonderful bilingual aunt who then sought the aid of her wonderful bilingual parents who most graciously translated these bits into authentic Spanish. I am incredibly blessed. Then I switched my English dialogue for the Spanish dialogue and now I have at least one character who speaks almost entirely in Spanish.
10. April 25, 2010–May 29, 2010–I did a word search of my manuscript for the words:

Very, Poor, Replied, Hissed, Whispered, Mumbled, Bellowed, Something, Thing, Somehow, Suddenly, Quickly , There is, There are, There was, There were, Just, Really, All, and Now. I took out as many of these words as I could and made sure that the uses of them that I did include made sense.

1. May 30, 2010–June 12, 2010–I fixed my riddle and some motivation problems for my villain. Then I went through my whole manuscript and edited all of the “clips” making sure that the “internal” clips and the “external” clips were separated by paragraphs. My manuscript was now 86,785 words and 314 pages.
2. June 13,2010–July 10, 2010–I mail my manuscript to two beta readers and read through my manuscript editing each page for tension and each paragraph for a beginning, middle, and end. I also attempt to polish the language.
3. July 18, 2010–December 4, 2010 –I take all of my wonderful story ideas and writing notes off of their napkins and stickies and put them into the proper computer files. Then while I await feedback from my first 3 beta readers, I start writing something totally different as a little break. A zombie devotional book for teenage boys, using a pseudonym of course.
4. December 5, 2010–January 29, 2011–I use the feedback from my first 2 beta readers to do another revision (Rough Draft #7) of my manuscript. My story goes from being 87,702 words to 90,171 words.
5. January 9, 2011–I revise my manuscript according to Sarah’s critique and write my submission materials. I also adjust my story to more closely fit my synopsis.
6. February 27, 2011–March 31, 2011–I set out to cut at least 380 words from my manuscript and I do it, and then add at least that much more when I tweak some scenes. And so I keep cutting until I have the word count down 89,237 which takes the page count from 324 to 321.
7. October 30, 2011–February 9, 2012–I revise my manuscript according to the helpful critique of my lovely sister Rolana and my husband’s critique of only the first paragraph. Just for your info, that one paragraph critique has given me weeks worth or work…but thank you Hunky Hubby, because it was going to be so so much better. this revision takes my manuscript from 89,053 words to 87,757 words.
8. December 23, 2011–January 20, 2012–I begin preparing to enter a writing contest. After Rolana returns my mock contest entry, I revise my pages and synopses according to her critique.
9. May 2, 2014–It has been several years since I looked at more than the first two chapters of this story. I have learned so much with my critique partner Jenn and in writing a novella ms. on a dare with Rolana. I never sent this manuscript to any agents although I did enter contests. I am setting out to go through this entire story and make it into something that I can submit. I need to change my villain (he might not be a villain after all, I’m not sure) I need to change my heroine, I need to simplify and deepen the plot and character arch…I need to cut superfluous words and add ones that make sense. Anyway, all that I’ve learned over the last few years, I’m going to implement and see what I have in the end. Oh, my word count at the beginning of this revision was 88,280 words. I hope to cut quite a bit. –I finished revision #10 of LMR and ended with a word count of 78,183 words. That means I cut over 10,000 words from this story. It still needs more work, but the thing was looking much better.
10. July 9, 2015—I start LMR revision #11. I want to fine tune the story. Make the character and plotting changes I did in the last big edit consistent throughout, and cut and polish.
11. September 1, 2016– I finally get back to revision #11. I’ve written 2 new books (a romance novella and a middle grade novel) since I started this revision and I want to get this story to the place where I can finally send it to some beta readers for feedback.
12. September 18, 2016–I finish revision #11 wherein I realize that four of my chapters in the middle are not pulling their own emotional weight. I cut each chapter out, one by one, put it into a new document and then rewrite it, keeping the necessary plot elements but changing the entire plot all around the core. I then paste the chapter back into my main story. I am much happier with the end results and send the story on to some wonderful people who have offered to read it for me: Mom, Johnnie Sue, Rolana, Heather, Jill, and Aunt Liz. Let’s call that Revision#12, although I did not read the whole thing over again, the story did change significantly.
13. September 27, 2016–Now while I’m awaiting feedback from my beta readers, I’m going to take this story through the fiction university “Revise Your Novel in 31 Days” course to see if I have all of the elements I need to make this succeed.
14. October-December 2016–Ok, I started getting feedback over these months and jumped back and forth between revising by using that fun online class and revising according to reader feedback. I received feedback from my aunt Liz, Mom, Jill, and Heather. The story smoothed out so much as they noted points of awkwardness. Then my crit partner Jenn jumped in and said that she could read some of it and of course she had tons of valuable feedback for me. Then, I won a free chapter critique from the very agent that I want to send this to…and she tore it to shreds. Which was good. Take a breath, yep, so very good. Because she gave me the fabulous idea of simply putting what I’d written aside and rewriting the first chapter from scratch as a linear scene without worrying about backstory or anything. Which was how I’d written it originally, but then I got advice and went and changed things and made my story worse, but guess what? After writing the scene fresh, my main character came across as much more sympathetic and so that advice was just gold. Painful gold, but gold nonetheless. So, the revising continues. I’m hoping to submit this in January…we shall see.
15. February 1, 2017–I finish revision#15. In two years of revising, I have taken this story from 88,280 down to about 77,000 words and then back up to 87,000 words and now it was down to 75,915 words. The total amount that I have cut from this story (I saved the cuts in a file) was 32,303 words. That was the same size as one of the novellas I wrote for Pelican Book Group, all words that I’ve thrown out. I am really hoping that this story was finally ready to see the light of day. I’ll know soon enough, I’m just waiting on a critique from one more person and then I can’t think of much else to do to the poor thing.
16. March 10, 2017– Today I sent off Losing My Religion to a literary agent I really like and now must hope for the best and distract myself by writing something new. The final word count for the story was 77,853 words and the number of words in my “LMR cuts file” was now at 33,099 words. So in my last big bout of revision, I cut 33,099 words out of the story and put back in 22,672 new words to get to the story that I have today. That’s a whole lot more work than I expected, but I’m much happier with the tale that I have today than the one that I had on file two or three years ago. That in itself if a victory.
17. May 26, 2017– I received a rejection letter for Losing My Religion from the agent I am interested in. She feels that I need to work harder on making my admittedly very snotty protagonist likable. She does give me a coupon for her plotting class and I sign up for that in an attempt to simplify my plot and work on that character motivation and likability.
18. June 14, 2017–I finish up an edit based on the literary agent’s online class and then in a leap of foolish bravery, send the ms. to an editor that I met at a conference last year. Her due date was approaching and I am hoping that she will have time to look at my story before leaving for maternity leave.
19. August 4, 2017–The editor does look at my story before her baby was born and sends me my very best rejection yet. Apparently, I have solved my “liking the protagonist” problems, for she does not mention this. But she says that the second half of the story feels like fantasy and the first like contemporary and that the one thing I lack was a working story structure. I purchase a new book on plotting and set out to make the story work.
20. October 10, 2017–I finish up a big revision of a middle grade ms. that was requested at a conference, and then jump into LMR Revision #18! The goal, break the story down to its simple, 8 segment, 3 Act structure and then pour some life-giving details into the remaining scenes. I pulled the first 25% out and put it into a new document, edited the heck out of it, and then put it back into the main story cutting out the old and inserting the new. I did this with each quarter of the story. this really helped me to let go of the old story and make it something new and fresh because I had the old version to go back to if I really wanted to. Also, I figured out that my “Hero sets out on the Adventure” scene was way too early and I need to write four new chapters to place at the beginning of the story.
21. January 12, 2018– I finish up LMR revision #18. The word count started at 80,526 words. I cut out 6,970 words and added 17,267 words bringing the grand total up to 97,793 words. It was higher, just barely under 100,000 words, but I managed more cutting my last time through the story.
22. January 13, 2018–I start revision #19 by changing the story according to feedback from my critique partner, Jenn and my mom and Johnnie Sue.
23. January 16, 2018–I submit LMR to that same agent I really like (even though she has already rejected it once, hope springs eternal!) and set the story aside to work on a Puppy Princess novel that the boys want me to write.
24. March 3, 2018–The agent’s intern gets back to me and says she liked the story much better this time and has sent it on to the agent. She suggests that I give the evil mother just one positive trait, to deepen the character. My crit partner has been asking me to do this forever, but I can’t figure out how to do it. So I pray. Right away I start having ideas. I write down two pages of ideas and then spend 5 hours of work writing about a thousand words to deepen the secondary character. This was such an answer to prayer because when I sent the story in, I asked the Lord to send it to the intern who would help the story out the most. So amazing when God steps into our ordinary world and touches the things that are important to us.
25. April 23, 2018–The agent that I submitted to suggests that I am very foolish to be waiting for her to finish reading my submission when I have an editor who told me I could submit LMR again if I revise. Since I have indeed revised, a lot, I submit to the aforementioned editor. She sends it on to another editor at her house and I wait some more.
26. June 1, 2018–LMR is chosen as a finalist in a writer’s contest for unpublished YA manuscripts. I do the happy dance.
27. June 5, 2018–After pitching this story at a writer’s conference, the editor gives me some great suggestions about making the reality TV show more believable. He also requests a proposal and full manuscript. I make the changes and then submit the story to him.
28. July 18th, 2018–I find out that I did not win the contest and some of the judges are quite critical. However, once the rainy cloud over my head dissipates, I realize that their criticism is pure gold. I know what to fix in my story. Yay, yay, yay! I jump into another revision that brings the story goal right onto the first page by the use of some fun foreshadowing. Hooray for grumpy judges and their honesty!
29. August 30, 2018–I heard back from the first editor I submitted to and find out that my ms. has gone on to the acquisitions team and is under consideration by her publishing house! This means that at least two different editors liked it. I must now wait some more … we shall see what happens.
30. April 3, 2019–I get a rejection letter from my favorite publisher saying that there is not room for my story on their lineup, but inviting me to submit again.

Writing process for Nineveh books (Daughter of the Decoy King and Viceroy of the gods)

• Inspiring Music: Word of God Speak–by Mercy Me, Let it Rain–by Michael W. Smith, Psalm 36–by Third Day, My Deliverer was Coming–by Rich Mullins, Here I am to Worship–by Tim Hughes, and Peace on Earth–by Casting Crowns

• Writing Hours for Nineveh books—2,994 hours and 28 min.

• # of Teen Books Read for Research–279
• # of Non-Fiction Research Sources–35
• # of Internet Research Sources—innumerable
• # of Interviews Conducted–2

Step by Step

1.  September 29, 2003–I enrolled in the class Writing & Selling Children’s Books from the Institute of Children’s Literature. This was my second class with the institute.
2. October 2, 2003–I received a pamphlet about my instructor, Bonny Becker, and instructions for completing Assignment #1. I filled out a questionnaire, wrote a letter to my instructor, and sent her information about two book ideas. The first idea was for a middle grade novel called Clash of the Klutzes. The second was for a YA novel called Nineveh. I already did quite a bit of research (acquiring people’s klutzy stories) for the middle grade story and was certain that my instructor would like that one best.
3. November 6, 2003–I receive my first assignment back from Bonny. In her letter, Bonny raised many questions about the depth of my Clash of the Klutzes idea, making it clear that I needed to have more than just a bunch of funny true life stories. Bonny liked the Nineveh idea best which surprised me. It was where my heart leaned, but I felt I wasn’t skillful enough yet to write it and was frightened of tackling something so difficult.
4. November 19, 2003–My sweet firstborn son was born!
5. January 22, 2004–I receive assignment #2 back in the mail. Yes, I went with my heart and chose to write Nineveh. This assignment included a market rationale, my working title, readership, age level, estimated length (30,000 words ha ha ha), genre, story line, theme, setting, time frame, plot summary, and a character analysis of seven different characters. Bonny loved the idea and was very encouraging, but had many questions that shook up my world some. I was thrilled because she said the idea was really strong, but terrified because she really made me think and wonder how in the world I was going to accomplish all of this, especially with my first baby only two months old. Bonny told me to be prepared to do a lot of research and sent two instructional pamphlets. One about story structure and another about letting story characters solve their own problems.
6. April 2, 2004–I received back Assignment #3 which consisted of a first draft of my first chapter, a detailed outline of my next two chapters, and a rough outline of the rest of the book. Bonny had questions galore after reading my first chapter. A great many things were confusing and I tended to have random plot elements that didn’t make sense as far as motivation and theme went. She said to slow down and let the reader get their footing in my world. Despite my best efforts, there was much that needed to be carefully thought through. Who knew that you couldn’t simply write in the full fire of an emotional high, but had to look back and make sure that everything made sense? Three years later I finally met Bonny at a writing conference and she said that of all her students she had never had one improve as dramatically as I did. Now, at first this may seem quite impressive, but the cold hard truth of it was that my first chapter was absolutely wretched. Thank God she didn’t crush my dreams because they were pretty fragile at that point.
7. September 30, 2004–I received back Assignment #4. Between Assignment #3 and #4 I spent three months simply doing research. I was really on a roll when I got a letter from the institute asking if I was still alive and where my assignment was. So I put the research aside and wrote the first seven chapters of my story. When I packaged up that first stack of 73 pages to send to Bonny, it was one of those incredible moments. I had never written something so lengthy in my life, never really let myself dream that I could. But here was this enormous stack of paper, words that I had somehow come up with. Now they weren’t very good (I had no idea) but there were a lot of them and I was elated. What Bonny Liked: In this assignment Bonny felt the story world was getting more solid, as well as Nirari’s character. She liked some of my descriptions, details, metaphors, and my prologue. What needed improvement: She said I needed to spell things out more clearly for the reader. I tended to presume that everyone knows about the Biblical story of Jonah, ancient Assyrian superstitions, and beer drinking etiquette. I also tended to suddenly change scenes without sufficient explanation of what was happening. She was still confused as she read. I was vague and needed more details. I didn’t show the characters thought processes as they made major decisions. I also needed more background info on Nirari. I left out Nirari’s reactions to huge story developments. She just did stuff, but without really feeling it. Basically she said I had a lot of work to do. Who knew it would be this hard?
8. December 21, 2004–I received Assignment #5 back in the mail. This lesson consisted of the rough draft of chapters eight through fourteen. What Bonny liked: A better sense of where Nirari was coming from, clearer feelings and emotions, more setting details, images and similes, being realistic with the violent culture, flirtatious banter, and that Nirari gets caught and hurt and makes mistakes. Now for the long list. What needed improvement: Nirari’s mission was unclear, confusion about why she needed to solve the riddle in the first place, a sketchy faith journey, I needed to improve my use of story elements and setting to forward the theme and faith journey, her unlikely instant trust of Assurari, too many coincidences, confusion about Assurari and why he wasn’t in mourning with his father, lack of appropriate reactions from Nirari and other people to big events, and Nirari forgetting to worry about her family. She told me to review a handout on story structure, particularly the section on theme. There are several concerns that she had to repeat and I found that certain story problems were very difficult for me to get right. I would attempt to fix them multiple times and get better but not good enough. I think these may continue to be weak areas that I’ll have to watch for in my writing.
9. March 4, 2005–I received Assignment #6 back in the mail. This lesson consisted of the first draft of chapters fifteen through twenty. What Bonny liked: Nirari felt more fleshed out; she had a better sense of her reactions and motives; the scenes were better set; a good weave of setting, description, and action in the first few chapters of this section; she liked that I gave Assurari most of Zer-lisir’s plot moments; she was more drawn into the story and more engaged by Nirari and her journey; Nirari’s mission felt clearer; she liked the inherent conflict; She wanted to see the same weaving of setting, description, and action throughout the story. What needed improvement: Setting and descriptive details got lost at the end; characters and situations popped up out of nowhere; needed more details; some confusion during the climax scene; people not acting in a realistic fashion emotionally; improbability with some of Assurari’s reactions; no ending follow up of Assurari’s story; she wanted Nirari to solve the riddle sooner to heighten conflict (which I did end up doing); the realization that Nirari’s actions have caused hurt for people around her, she felt shallow and underdeveloped; she wanted Nirari to feel more guilty then she was shown to be.
10. June 2, 2005–Bonny sent back Assignment #7. This lesson consisted of a rewrite of chapters one through ten. What Bonny liked: She was impressed with my growth as a writer between drafts; the new details about Assyrian culture; the image of a jar I used to break up major scene changes; the agent I decided to submit to first; she said I had a good eye and way with words when it came to descriptive details and dialog (this was a real shock as dialogue has always been really, really hard for me, guess there’s hope that my other areas of weakness might become strengths someday). What needed improvement: The quest and need to solve the riddle still wasn’t well established; Nirari just assumes she has a mission when Jonah gets vomited onto the beach; the results of the solved riddle are unclear, what was supposed to happen; her journey away from Nineveh was unclear; why does she think she needs to travel so far; the trek with the caravan was too vague; how old was Hadden; What was the social standing of Nirari’s family; I needed a better set up for both the eclipse and her father becoming king; she wanted to see people’s reactions to these events; it was not believable that Nirari and her mother would simply go along with being transported to the palace; needed to see Nirari’s internal questions about what was going on when she first arrives at the palace; should show more devastation and people getting hurt from the earthquake; needed to show how her father comes to the conclusion that he must sacrifice Hadden; her rescue of Hadden was unclear and sketchy; needed to see her horror that the sacrifice was still going to happen without Hadden; wanted me to show Nirari slink away and not rescue the other babe (therefore I added Nirari’s part in the other babe’s death); I needed to watch in general for a tendency to make big jumps in time and then back fill with sketchy information. Bonny also sent me a pamphlet on coming up with a title.
11. August 30, 2005–I received Assignment #8 in the mail. This lesson consisted of a revision of chapters eleven through twenty, filled out publisher choice forms for my top three publishers and three paragraphs with my rational for submitting to them. What Bonny liked: She said I did a good job of putting the reader into the Assyrian world and keeping them there; liked my footnotes; the better weave of character, setting, and action; the story felt more coherent. What needed improvement: She still didn’t like the current title; didn’t like my chapter titles (admittedly they continued to be horrid despite the fact that I loved them); she was still up in the air about my overall theme; she wanted me to construct one sentence related to Nirari’s main choice during the climax. She told me to post this sentence by my computer as my theme (My sentence was this: Choosing God’s mercy over His justice for ourselves leads us to give mercy instead of justice to others.); she wanted me to construct a story arc for justice vs. mercy where I would plot out which of Nirari’s decisions supported justice and which supported mercy; Nirari’s motivation needed development; Nirari kept forgetting her primary purpose; Nirari’s mood changed dramatically without set up; story events needed to be more logical. She wanted me to write down every scene of the story and answer three questions 1.) Where was Nirari? 2.)What does this event do? 3.) What was her motivation? She wanted it to be more believable that Nirari doesn’t know about Joram’s love and Nirari’s father needed to react to her more.
12. October 17, 2005–My second beautiful baby boy was born.
13. November 10, 2005–Bonny mailed back Assignment #9. Normally this final assignment consists of the submission materials prepared in final form for the first publisher on your list and any chapters that the instructor felt needed further work. But Bonny wanted to see a whole new revision of the entire manuscript since things weren’t coming together like she wanted. What Bonny liked: She liked my author bio; she was thrilled with how the story had grown; she liked the richer description, setting, character, and theme; and she said, (and I quote) I have no doubt you are going to become a published author. (Hope hope hope.) What needed improvement: More about Nirari in the beginning. She wanted a better set up of Nirari’s ordinary world before I tear her life to shreds; she wanted more about her mother and their difficult relationship; more about her father and how he spoiled her; wanted the motivations and reactions of characters to be more realistic and occur right after the event that inspired them; Nirari escaped too many times from too many different people (she was escaping from someone every chapter it seemed and I never noticed). Bonny had a couple of changes for my query letter and wasn’t sure on the format for my synopsis. But she passed me for the class and I received my wall certificate from the institute.
14. December 4, 2005–January 21, 2006 I made the changes that Bonny requested in my final class letter and fixed what she marked on the manuscript.
15. January 22, 2006–January 28, 2006 I polished my first five pages for a writing conference I hoped to attend. I used The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman as a guide.
16. January 29, 2006–February 7, 2006 I did the character quiz and some other character exercises from The Plot Thickens by Noah Lukeman.
17. February 8, 2006–November 7, 2006 I did every applicable exercise from Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook by Donald Maass. The Tension on Every Page chapter alone took over six weeks. This revision added a lot of depth (and length) to my story.
18. November 8, 2006–November 22, 2006 I did the applicable exercises from The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes by Jack M. Bickham.
19. November 23, 2006–January 6, 2007 I applied the information from my More Revisions file to the story. During the writing process I kept a computer file called More Revisions. It messed up my writing to be constantly going back into the text whenever I had a great idea, plus I was never sure which ideas were indeed the great ones. So whenever I had an idea for the story I put it into this file. Then when the time was right I looked through the file, threw out the bad ideas, and worked on applying all of the good ones. I ended up with 43 ideas left and made almost all of those changes to the story.
20. January 7, 2007–January 29, 2007 As recommended in It’s a Bunny Eat Bunny World by Olga Litowinsky, I did word searches for certain words (was, that, had, feel, felt) and looked at each occurrence making sure that it was necessary to the text. This knocked my word count down by over 500 words.
21. January 30, 2007–February 10, 2007 I did a dialogue polish, removing about 300 unnecessary words.
22. February 11, 2007–February 17, 2007 I read my manuscript out loud into a recorder.
23. February 18, 2007–March 5, 2007 I listened to the recording of my story and marked any sections that bothered me. I also ordered some more history books on ancient Assyria and transferred some paper notes to my computer files.
24. March 6, 2007–March 31, 2007 I looked at all of the places that I marked and attempted to polish them up. When finished, I printed up two copies of my manuscript and mailed them to my two first readers.
25. April 1, 2007–June 16, 2007 While I waited for feedback from my first readers I did some additional research on ancient Assyria, worked on a file to organize my footnotes, rewrote my first scene according to a critique at an SCBWI regional conference, made a glossary, and a list of character names.
26. June 17, 2007–June 23, 2007 I revised according to my two readers’ notes and printed up two more copies of my manuscript for my next two readers. One was a fellow writer and English major, the other was the most honest, precise, and demanding proofreader I have ever encountered. And despite the fact that she was my best friend, she made hundreds of insightful marks on my copy leaving only twelve pages unscathed out of over 300.
27. June 24, 2007–July 24, 2007 While waiting for my writer friend and grammar friend to give feedback, I continued to research ancient Assyria.
28. July 25, 2007–August 18, 2007 I revised according to the feedback given by my English major and grammar expert friends. (Which was of course priceless and massively helpful.) I also changed the relationship between Nirari and Hadden making it more sisterly and less of a mother’s perspective.
29. August 19, 2007 I gave a copy of my manuscript to a teen reader for critique. That teen then ran away from home and took my manuscript with her??? I hope she is safe … .
30. August 19, 2007–September 1, 2007 I applied the new research that I had gathered and mailed a copy of my manuscript to a youth pastor for critique.
31. September 2, 2007–September 8, 2007 I transferred my writing notes to my computer files and read the last Harry Potter book.
32. September 9, 2007–October 13, 2007 I took a break from my story to give myself a fresh perspective and wrote the content for my website.
33. October 14, 2007–October 20, 2007 I polished the website content.
34. October 21, 2007–November 3, 2007 I read my story straight through after a six week break and marked passages that needed work.
35. November 4, 2007–November 30, 2007 I mope and pray about what elusive problem was making my story so blah and then realize that my transitions are choppy. So I revise the flow for the entire manuscript.
36. December 1, 2007– My third beautiful baby boy was born at 6:33 am!!!
37. December 7, 2007–December 8, 2007– I finish up the final few pages of my pace and flow revision, print the manuscript off for my husband to finally read and shut down Dietrich (my laptop) for two months.
38. December 9, 2007–February 1, 2008– I take a break from writing to enjoy my sweet new baby and wait for him to learn to sleep through the night. Also, I decide I need to do more polishing on the first three chapters and tell my husband that he can’t read anymore of the printed manuscript and must wait for the final final final version.
39. February 1, 2008–February 10, 2008– I transfer my writing notes from my day planner to the computer, make time charts for the year, get the website construction process going again, do a word search replacing the word “towards” with “toward” in 47 places in my manuscript, make changes to the story that I had written in my notes, and make some changes to the website material.
40. February 11, 2008–February 23, 2008– I polish chapters 1, 2, and 3 of the manuscript, especially chapter one and the beautification scene in chapter two.
41. February 24, 2008–March 1, 2008– I make a document that contains all of my action scenes involving Nirari fighting. I polish those scenes (about 23 pages) and send them to my long lost cousin Shawn who was a black belt in a couple of different martial arts. He agreed to look at the flow of movement in my action and give me some help.
42. March 2, 2008–March 8, 2008– I polish chapters 1, 2, and 3 again.
43. March 9, 2008–March 16, 2008– I polish and shrink my website content.
44. March 17–March 22, 2008– I mail my ms. to Jill Johansen for critique, and polish my one sentence hook.
45. March 23–March 29, 2008– I revise the way that Nirari treats Anzillu in the first scene so that she chooses to go over the edge and treat him badly rather than simply rescue her brother.
46. March 30–April 4, 2008– Due to my husband’s insistence that a scar was very important and must have a good story, I revise the explanation for Nirari’s scar.
47. April 5–April 12, 2008– I take a break to refill my creative juices and watch season 6 of 24 on DVD. We don’t have TV and so must wait a year to watch our favorite shows when they come out on DVD. But at least once we finally get our hands on a show we can watch the whole thing quickly. Well–as quickly as parents of three children under five can manage.
48. April 13–April 19, 2008– I polish the new scar material and transfer my writing notes from my day planner to my computer.
49. April 20–June 21, 2008– I e-mail Sally Stuart about a manuscript evaluation of my first three chapters and begin a paragraph edit wherein I look at each individual paragraph in the story in an attempt to give it a beginning, middle, and an end as well as making sure that it was the best paragraph that I can make it.
50. June 15–June 28, 2008– I prepare a chapter outline and the first three chapters and send them to Sally Stuart for evaluation.
51. June 29–August 2, 2008– I worked on my website. It’s harder than it looks.
52. August 3–August 9, 2008– I revised my manuscript according to feedback from my friend Jill.
53. August 10–August 23, 2008– I try to cut chapters 1, 2, 16, and 19 down to under 20 pages like Sally Stuart suggested. I only succeed with two of the four.
54. August 24–September 6, 2008– The four chapters that I cut were so much better for it that I do a cut and polish revision on the rest of the manuscript. I become much more ruthless than I have ever been before in my cutting.
55. September 7– September 24, 2008–Due to requests from both Jill and Sally Stuart I do a word search throughout the manuscript on the word “liver” and cut some of the usages. Then I go through the entire story one more time to cut or explain any confusing historical references and bits of trivia on Assyrian life. I also write an “Author’s Note” concerning the use of “liver” and “heart” in the ancient world and place it at the beginning of the story.
56. September 25–September 27, 2008– My website finally launched and I printed up and presented my manuscript to my sweet hubby for him to read!
57. September 29–October 4, 2008–  I made my final changes to the website and entered my writing notes into my computer file.
58. October 6–October 11, 2008–  I wrote a six page synopsis, an author bio, and typed my queries into an e-mail. I don’t paste the query in because that seems to mess with the formatting and then I get stuck making a bunch of changes anyway, so decided to just type it in and see if that worked.
59. October 13–October 18, 2008–  I make title pages and a file for each agent in my first round of submissions (2 agencies). I put everything that they want for their proposals in that file. If the first agency was interested they want a synopsis, author bio, and three sample chapters. If the second agent was interested she wanted a synopsis, cover letter, analysis of perspective readers, comparable titles, author bio, and sample chapters. So I got all of these set up in different files and polish each separate package.
60. October 21–October 25, 2008  I made some changes to my first chapter and put it up on the website. Never Ever Do This!!! I had to take it down in order to enter contests later! Added some pictures to the website and make some changes suggested by my husband. I have my best friend/grammar expert look at my queries and the sample chapter. Then I made all of the changes that she suggested, mostly, and finally finally after over 5 years on this story I sent out my first query.
61. November 3–November 8, 2008  I made changes to chapters 2-20 based on a reading by my husband and a partial reading by my cousin who was a martial artist. I wanted Nirari’s movements to be correct during fight scenes so that was why I contacted my cousin. Then I wrote 10 book club discussion questions and made a document that contained all of the questions that I should or want to ask an agent if one should happen to call. This concludes the writing process for “Overturned.” I am officially finished with everything that I know to do.
62. May 24, 2011–October 29, 2011–I attended the 2011 Northwest Christian Writer’s Renewal and one editor and one agent requested a proposal for “Overturned”. But two different editors tell me that they aren’t really interested in stand alone titles and I have never thought of dividing “Overturned” up into multiple books before but it makes sense. I prepare my proposal and the agent tells me to wait to send it until I have divided up the book to my liking. So I set out to make my one large book into two smaller ones. “Daughter of the Decoy King” and “Overturned”.
63. December 2, 2011–January 15, 2012–I prepared to enter a writing contest. After making up mock contest entries and sending them with the score sheet (that I got off their website) to my lovely sister. I begin to use her helpful critiques to improve my work for the actual contest.
64. March 2012–August 2012–Taking the advice of an editor at a conference four years ago, I have an idea for a modern story that will ease the reader into Ancient Assyria. I write a short story about one of Nirari’s descendants who was given a vision of the past when she gets clobbered by some runaway luggage in the airport. I snowflake the short story and once I finish writing it, I will divide it into four pieces and insert it into my two Nineveh books at the beginning and end of each book.
65. August 2012–September 2012–I sent my short story (which ended up being 14,773 words long) to Sarah, Rolana, and Jon Johansen. Then after their wonderful feedback I revised and polished just in time to be surprised by being able to attend the ACFW conference in Dallas with Becca Whitham. Thanks Nathan and Becca!!!
66. October 2012–December 2012–When a publishing house I met with at the ACFW conference requested the full manuscript I spent several days reading four years worth of the archived blogs written by their editors. I then go through both Nineveh books and revise according to everything that I learned from their blog entries.
67.  January 2013–October 2013 I revised both books according to notes from an editor and critiques from my critique partner Jenn. This happened because I received a very nice but firm rejection letter from the editor with my full manuscript, since she gave several suggestions for improvement I set out to revise both books again. I also work through Susan May Warren’s writing book “Deep and Wide” and make improvements to both Nineveh books.
68. September 2013— Jenn and I critique each other’s first five pages and short synopsis so that we can enter the ACFW First Impressions Contest again. I discover that I overuse the word “even” a lot and I spend several days going over both Nineveh manuscripts to take out as many uses of the word as I can.
69. October 2013–I’m all done revising with the writing book “Deep and Wide” but Jenn and I are still exchanging chapters and revising our manuscripts that way. I’m about half way done with this intensive revision of the first Nineveh book.
70. April 7, 2014–I finally finish revising the first Nineveh book with my critique partner Jenn. It has been over a year that we have been exchanging chapters. Due to my partnership with Jenn I have accidentally added 17,524 words to my manuscript which was about 58 pages. Ooops! Well, Jenn was always asking very good questions, which inspired me to find out the answers. It was a much better book though, due to a whole lot of work from both of us. The word count was now 78,698 words.
71. April 14, 2014–At the NWCWA Conference an editor from a house that rejected a full of this ms. told me that I can resubmit to her if I do a revision softening some of the violence and making sure that it was off stage. When I started writing this, my goal was to make Ancient Assyria real, now I start a revision in which I look to see if there was a way to tell the story and have the impact of the violent culture without having so much of the violence in the text.
72. July 8, 2014– Although I was a semi-finalist in the Genesis Contest, I did not final. But I did get back 6 critiques of my first 15 pages and synopsis for my effort. I am going to revise my Genesis entry and then the whole ms. according to the feedback from judges. I also got a letter expressing interest in my story from an agent. She said she loved my writing in ch.1 but wasn’t as invested in the story when it switched to Nirari’s viewpoint. So I revised ch. 2 on my own, send it to Jenn, revised that according to her critique, then when I go through the whole ms. with my Genesis feedback I made sure that the changes I made in ch. 2 follow through the whole story. I also looked for awkward parts I missed and take out my favorite Darling. That scene with the ancient Babylonian curse for one who was peed upon by a dog. It does not further the plot, so I finally let it go. I’ve been holding onto it for years, but this agent mentioned that she doesn’t have time to take on writers who need a lot of editing, so I’ve got to have my ms. at its very best.
73. September 14, 2015—I get the chance to submit my first Nineveh book to a publisher that I have been watching since they began two years ago. They are opening up submissions for just the month of September. Although my dream agent told me “No, write something else and send that to me.” I just keep on hoping for this story.
74. May 9, 2016-June 21, 2016–I start revising the first Nineveh book again based upon two rejection letters (for 2 different manuscripts) from an agent I really like. I pitch this story at a writer’s conference and get a request to see a proposal and full manuscript from an editor at a large Christian publishing house. I continue to revise making certain that the main character was sympathetic right off the bat and that her personal goal was clear. I want the story as perfect as I know how to make it before I send in that submission. I finish up my edit after cutting 791 words. My word count for “Daughter of the Decoy King” was now 75,380 words.
75. July and August 2016–I submit my manuscript, the editor says she loves it and passes it on to three other editors. I try not to get my hopes up. Folks have liked my writing before and still not chosen my story. While I chew my fingernails to stubs waiting, I pull out the second Nineveh book which I haven’t done much to for about four years and start another revision, trying to get the second book caught up to where the first book was with regards to both story growth and polish.
76. September 2016–I do not get an offer from the editor. I do get some wonderful compliments on my writing, editing suggestions, and the encouragement to get an agent and then resubmit. The agent I like, tells me to revise according to this editor’s notes and then she’ll look at the story again. I am supposed to take out the modern day story, cut any extra scenes I can, deepen the emotion in the scenes that remain, and put the two books back together again. Both books together are now 136,336 words. I need to get it under 100,000 words, preferably 90,000. Cutting out the modern story gets me down to 118,934 words. I have a ways to go.