Estes and Manuscripts

"Okay, we've got you reserved."
-Gal at the cottage place

Tomorrow Keith and I set off on a mini vacation to Estes Park. We're going to stay at a little cottage and do a bit of hiking, a lot of bumming, and take a day trip to the Denver Zoo. I'm quite looking forward to it.

Along on the trip will be the first 141 pages of Deb's manuscript, My Mother's Ghost which she recently pitched to an agent who asked for it, in full. She's now frantically "polishing" it before sending it to the agent, and a handful of us, including Jenny and I, have volunteered to lend a hand. Yes, everyone says that pinning one's hopes on a single agent is silly, the odds are against you and all that. However, the fact that he requested the whole manuscript right off the bat and told her he loved her voice, makes me excited for her.

Speaking of Jenny, she's making some progress with her own manuscript, Following Julia Roberts, which she gave me thirty more pages of on Saturday. Thirty pages is not what I would hope for, but it's a start. I'm giving her quite a hard time about writing more. Right now. For me. Damnit. I may have to update my list of occupations: Student, waitress, SCWP assistant, and Jenny nag.

For my own writing, I've decided to pull back on Oracle and stop submitting it to the group for now. I can't write fast enough to be fair to them, and everyone's losing track of what's-what since I'm constantly changing things as I go, making people say "Huh? I don't remember that from the last chapter." Shame on me. Thus, I've decided to work on the book on my own for now, and spend some time building up my short story pile (which has gone long neglected). I'm two pages into a brand new story, and it's feeling good to think that it'll actually be complete soon, rather than a few years from now.