August Highlights

Wow.  Just wowowow.  This month has gone by so fast!!  I think I blinked a few times...

Writing

Well, I spent the first half of the month re-outlining Words of Gold.  After talking with Sarah, Bard, and Pup, I decided to change a number of things, and that eventually went on to differences in the next two books... *grabs fistfuls of hair* ...but these things needed to be done, and they'll make everything better, so why should I complain about the work?

After getting that fixed up, I did another go-around on the first three chapters of Words of Gold.  I'm polishing those babies up until they're all just how I want them!

Blogging

Obviously, I've been changing the look of this place...and I also finished the first five parts to my series on finishing a first draft!

Part 1: Problems

Part 2: Time

Part 3: Distractions

Part 4: Procrastination

Part 5: Boredom

And elsewhere in the blogging world...

Sarah talked about Editing a First Ever Novel

Grey posted some tips about Making an Unforgettable Villain

Melissa gave some great questions for Creating Fictional Histories.

Ivie finished up her Politcal and Social Series.

Hannah talked about making Scenes Emotionally Gripping.

These guys are great; seriously, go check them out!  Other people wrote other amazing things, but these are the things that I really found helpful to myself at the moment.

Life

Sarah, Evangeline and I all went to a church conference at the beginning of the month, which was lots of fun!  We spent a lot of down time working on our outlines and just helping each other work out some story issues. 

I also uploaded a song to SoundCloud.  Sarah wrote it as a sort of "end credit" song for her trilogy, and as a surprise, I put it to music, recorded a guitar track, and got a fellow member of Order of the Pen to sing it.  Then we surprised Sarah with it.  The results were worth it all!

On the farm, we did some pasture maintenance, and got the back (and largest) pasture all trimmed up and in good shape.  I also got some good, long rides in with the horses, and then also went to VA for an long-distance event with Sarah.  Came in second place, which was awesome!!

This was taken very early in the morning, so it's very foggy out and the quality isn't that great.

Riding through the rangelands (cow pastures) of VA.

Plans

So what am I doing in September?  Celebrating Sarah's birthday with her.  Training for another horse race.  Beating to death and burning alive these first couple chapters of Words of Gold.  And trying to get a lot of reading done, because I did hardly any of that over the first half of the year.

So what are y'all up to?  Did you have a good August, or did it fly by as if on the wings of teleporting Eagles?