Click to see other participants’ progress reports

Here are the “FAR” goals I established for this round of ROW80:

F-INISHING works in progress by adding >500 weekly new words, net.

A-DDING >1000 weekly new words to works with 10k words or less to them, and

R-EVISING two works for submission (converting one from adult to new adult and editing one based on feedback.) by tackling at least ONE chapter per week.

Here’s what I have done so far this week:

FINISHING:  690 words.

ADDING:  246 words so far.

REVISING: About a half chapter.

I skipped last Sunday’s checkin–really didn’t have much to say because everything was on hold for the Olympics. But now they are over and I’ve put myself back on pace to achieve my weekly goal. I’m doing okay so far.

Here’s a weekly meme excerpting some of my “finishing” work:

From my WIP, Three Dates, a little banter between the heroine and hero. Lucy is a matchmaker for a dating agency who handles the “mismatched irregulars and seconds” and Griffin is her client. Lucy narrates. All first draft material so…

I studied Griffin’s profile as he appeared to be pondering the artwork hanging near our booth. Dark whiskers covered his angular jawline. His hair had a slight cowlick on the right side near his part. I loved men’s necks. They were studies in contrasts, of strength and vulnerability wrapped in the same package.

He turned suddenly. “Do you believe in marriage, Lucy?”

Busted. “I do. But for the right reasons. Making a baby together isn’t the right reason.”

A flicker of melancholy passed over his face. Sympathy for me or was he feeling thwarted in his quest to find a wife and mother for his own future children?

“How old were you when you had Angus?”

“Is that a round about way of asking how old I am?” I winked at him, happy for a tool to erase the soggy-bottomed moodiness threatening to creep in.

“Maybe,” he said with a boyish grin. “You know how old I am. Am I not allowed to know how old you are?”

“I’m thirty.”

“A youngster.”

“Thirty is the new sixteen.”

He laughed and a dimple formed in his left cheek. I’d never noticed it before, but there it was, and instantly he was sixteen too. Why weren’t the women he dated seeing what I was seeing? What was wrong with them? Maybe I was coaching the wrong person?

We ate our ice creams and fought over the check. We ended up going dutch at my near hysterical insistence—I had to at least try to keep some professional distance. Clutching our fortune cookies, we paused near the restaurant’s exit and cracked them open.

“Your charms transcend traditional standards,” he read. “Whatever the hell that means.” With a lift of his chin he indicated for me to read my fortune.

“Like the phoenix, your love waits to be reborn.” I twisted my face contemplating the message.

Griffin held the door open for me, and as I passed, he said softly, “It seems, you hold my fortune in your hands.”

Little known factoid: I put fortune cookies in almost ALL my stories. Just one of my quirks, I guess.

If you want to read more mid-week teasers, check out the Linky List:

http://www.linkytools.com/basic_linky_include.aspx?id=226882

Thanks to all my visitors and commenters. 🙂

Click to see other participants’ progress reports

Here are the “FAR” goals I established for this round of ROW80:

F-INISHING works in progress by adding >500 weekly new words, net.

A-DDING >1000 weekly new words to works with 10k words or less to them, and

R-EVISING two works for submission (converting one from adult to new adult and editing one based on feedback.) by tackling at least ONE chapter per week.

Here’s what I have done so far this week:

FINISHING:  Nothing.

ADDING:  Nothing.

REVISING: Nothing.

Seems like Groundhog Day doesn’t it? Seems like you already read this exact same post last Wednesday and something not too much different on Sunday. Okay. Guilty as charged. In my defense, I’m still Olympics hooked. They are ending soon though and I’ve made use of the time pondering plots and plotting publishing (but no publishing pages, ha!)

In the meantime, once again, so you don’t totally feel like you wasted a trip to my blog, here’s a weekly meme excerpting some of my work:

From my WIP, Three Dates, about a single mother (Lucy) employed by a matchmaking agency and tasked to handle the more difficult clients (Griffin, in this case). Lucy is the narrator. Angus is her young son. All first draft material so…

Griffin stood and gathered our trash. He sealed the box of donuts and offered them to a homeless man sitting on a nearby bench. Giving no explanation for his odd mood, he said, “Ready?”

“Yes. Of course. Angus, honey, can you toss Mommy’s coffee cup away for her, please?” He hopped over like a rabbit, picked up my cup and hopped away to the garbage can.

“What’s wrong?” I asked Griffin once Angus was out of earshot.

He gave a slight shake of his head. “Nothing. I guess it’s the sugar rebounding on me. I know I shouldn’t eat the damned things, but sometimes I just like to say ‘to hell with it’ and do what I want to do and not what I’m supposed to do.” He fixed me with a cold stare, his hazel eyes more brown than green, pupils dilated under the dark canopy of the trees. I felt like that voodoo doll donut with the salty pretzel stake through its heart and I wasn’t even sure why.

I let him get away with his lame explanation. What choice did I have? Whatever it was that Griffin and I had going wasn’t something I could allow myself to dwell on, wonder what I had done to mess it up, because the only answer I could come up with—and it was a doozy—was sleeping with him. Hard to imagine anything else to trump that one critical mistake. Problem was, I didn’t know how to fix it. Seemed Griffin had no sooner pulled out one stake in me than he poked me with another.

The irony of the love guru solving everyone’s love life but her own wasn’t lost on me. I had to find someone for Griffin, someone suitable, someone not me. Soon.

Angus hopped back on one foot and smiled up at me.

“Ready to go, my beamish boy?” I held out my hand for him to take. He nodded but walked over and took Griffin’s hand instead.

This was going to be a bigger problem than I thought.

If you’ve ever been to Portland, OR, you might have caught the reference to Voodoo Donuts, kind of a local legend in these parts. That’ll be changing to Daydream Donuts in the final story, but for now, I’ve left it.

If you want to read more mid-week teasers, check out the Linky List:

http://www.linkytools.com/basic_linky_include.aspx?id=226314

Thanks to all my visitors and commenters. 🙂