The fight with my digestive system continues.  By now, that's a non issue.  However, in the quest to find ever milder things to eat so that I can build up my strength to stomach spicy Nandos later in the week, I have discovered something really tasty.

1.  Cook chicken and carrot in water.
2. Scoop it out and shred it.
3.  Cook rice in the same water.  Use more water so that the rice turns out sloshy when cooked.
4. Add the chicken and carrot back in with some salt.

Guess what's for dinner for the rest of the week?  :)  Chicken Carrot Rice Slosh.  It's really tastier than it sounds.  I think I'm even deliberately trying to make it sound disgusting.  

This weekend I found myself languishing.  I had a bunch of stuff to do (Vert Glace needs another once over...), but I just didn't do it.  So, instead, I drove down on a whim to see my partner, who gave me my Christmas present early.  A planner!  He knows me well.

So, onto new year resolutions.

1.  Continue improving my manuscript
2. To submit to publishers (3)
3. To query agents (5)
4. To finish writing another full length story 
5.  To make a legit psychologist professional development plan, and document hours of development properly.  

It's very important for a psychologist to continue to develop his/her skills.  There's a certain amount of hours, and certain activities that psychs must to do retain their registration.  I'm always good on that front - I'm too curious not to study, and my boss is great at organizing peer consultation stuff.  But compared to previous years, 2014 has not been crash hot in the PD department.  I think I was just very focused on my writing.  I need to have more balance in 2015.  I can't promise that I will go, but I am going to try my darnest to get to the Australian and New Zealand Association for Contextual Behavioural Science conference next year if it's somewhere in Australia.  If I can do that, or get some other ACT/RFT training, I will be happy as moon pie.

The emphasis on 2015 is still going to be on writing though.  I want to give it a real shot.  That's not to say I'm going to stop if nothing has happened by the end of 2015 - trying to stop myself writing is like trying to stop spiders from getting into a house.  They will get in.  But at some point, I need to do my masters et cetera.  So before I pour 4 years of my rapidly twilighting youth into that, I'd best give this getting published thing a fair go.  Why 5 agents and 3 publishers? I'm pulling the numbers out of my butt, of course.  Querying that many agents with Vert Glace feels a bit like spam.  Time and effort intensive spam.  I'm hoping one year is going to be enough time to research and approach people. 


 

I've been editing Vert Glace.  If I don't start a blog post with that, you know I've been slacking off.  Today I had a lovely massage in the morning, and then got cracking on the last 30.

And guess what?  I have finished the editing pass.

There comes a stage where one just has to say to oneself, NO MORE EDITING PASSES.  Of course, I reserve the right to change my opinion tomorrow.

Right now, Vert Glace is sitting at 92.5k, which is higher than a good YA word count (or so I've read).  :|  I'm hoping that I get some leeway because it's fantasy/sci-fi.  We shall see.  These past few years has taught me that one can never be too precious about one's work.  I will take an axe to this thing if I have to.  

So what next from here?  It's all new territory for me.  I've been told that I need to write something called a query letter.  And synopses (wow, takes me back to my high school days).  I'm also going to look into publishers who do direct submissions.


My goal this year was to write a manuscript that I feel confident in querying/submitting.  I think I have it (again, reserve the right to chance opinion).  This is pretty exciting.  I'm thinking that even my first rejection will be exciting.  But I don't know how exciting subsequent rejections will be.