Spring Cleaning Writer Challenge!

Created by Deborah O'Carroll

Hey'a, all! So, around the end of last month, Deborah O'Carroll created a cool new writing tag: the Spring Cleaning Challenge! This is a pretty short tag, but it also looks really fun. Plus, while I've been keeping you all up-to-date (well, up-to-month) with my current writing adventures, I'd like to share some of my broader writing plans with y'all, and this seems like a great way to do it!

But, first, the Rules:

1. Link back to the person who tagged you
2. Share the picture
3. Answer the questions (naturally…) or even pick and choose which ones you answer
3.5. Tag 3 other writers and inform them that you tagged them (via comment/message/email or hey, even carrier-pigeon or smoke signal; I’m not picky)

And now the questions!

1. Dust-bunnies and Plot-bunnies: Reorganize Your Writing Goals (Or Make New Ones)
I actually set a couple writing goals at the start of the year, so let's revisit those:

• Finish editing and posting Fight Song. This one isn't finished yet, but I've made good progress! If I recall correctly, I have fewer than ten chapters left before I'm done, and I plan to get back to work either when I hit my Camp NaNo goal or in May, whichever works better. So, once that happens, I should be able to finish relatively quickly.
  
• Write a short fiction piece a month. I did great on this in January! I wrote, like, two whole short stories! But then February happened and I tried but got nowhere. So that's unfortunate. And in March I didn't even try . . . the deadline for Indie e-Con is coming up, though, so I should probably make one last attempt before it's too late. I'll try to pick this up again during the summer, but I don't know how well it'll go.
• Finish rewriting Destinies and Decisions. Hahaha. I haven't even worked on this one and I am definitely dropping it. Other projects are higher priority right now.
• Finish editing Between Two Worlds. Again, haven't worked on this at all, and I don't think I'll finish edits this year. I would like to get more work done on edits, though, so that's my modified goal.
• Participate in all three NaNoWriMo events. So far, so good! Camp NaNoWriMo is coming along nicely, even though I had a solid week in which I was too mentally exhausted to really get more than a page, maybe two, done per day. I'm definitely participating in July Camp too. November . . . well, we'll see what happens.
  
• Set and meet a new writing goal every month. The setting of goals is going splendidly. The meeting of goals . . . Well, I've given it my best shot, so I'm going to call this a win.

 So, that's one goal dropped, another modified, two that are almost definitely going to be achieved to some degree, and two that I'm going to give another shot before I give up on. Not bad.       
 
2. Which Stage Are You At? Expound!

a. Remodeling layouts (planning the story)
b. Painting the walls in colorful hues (writing)
c. Polishing the windows and scrubbing the floors and putting flowers in vases (editing)
d. Blueprints (not to the cleaning or remodeling yet… just drawing up plans for the very beginning inklings of a story)
e. Some combination of those things (cleaning out a closet)

Like Deborah, I'm going to answer this by running through my significant projects— I can't say WIPs, because some of them aren't properly in progress but I'm making plans for them to be in progress later, so, yeah.

• Fight Song: Polishing the windows, scrubbing the floors, putting flowers in vases . . . and also creating blueprints for what else I might do in this storyworld, because I have too much potential in this storyverse to let it go easily.
• Berstru Tales: Cleaning out many closets. Literally all the other categories— planning, editing, beginning-inklings, even a little writing— are happening. I really want to continue writing these, because I love the characters and their relationships, I love the world, and I love the plotlines I'm contemplating for the future. However, I've expanded Berstru quite a lot since I wrote the first book, and I have so many thoughts on how the earlier books could be better, or things I wish I'd done differently . . . I may end up rewriting the series from the beginning before I try to edit Destinies and Decisions again. I am definitely also going to rethink my naming scheme, because currently it does not say high-fantasy, at least in my opinion.
• Between Two Worlds: Taking a break from polishing, scrubbing, flowers in vases, etc. I'm still very happy with this book and I most definitely want to publish it somehow, someday.
• Dust of Silver & Monster in the Castle: Cleaning out closets again. We've got blueprints and remodeling layouts for the future of the series, but we've also got painting and polishing and scrubbing on Dust of Silver and plans for more of the same on Monster, which is also getting renamed because yeah. I do not like my naming abilities. 
• Blood in the Snow, Mechanical Heart, & Once Upon a Dream: Currently are collecting dust, but all three are hopefully going to get some polishing and scrubbing and flowers and such fairly soon. And by "fairly soon" I mean sometime in the next year. I have plans, and they might be stupid plans, and I still need to work on all the details, but . . . yeah. Watch this space come June or July-ish and you might hear something. At least these ones won't need renamed.

 3. Treasure From the Back of the Closet (Share one to three snippets you love!)
I can do that! Snippets are from Dust of Silver, my Camp NaNoWriMo WIP.

Poppy wrinkled her nose and scowled at Lily. "That's because you make yourself useless, you wilting rose petal."

~~~~

"We shouldn't go." Pansy's tremulous voice came from the back of the crowd. She stared at nothing, eyes wide, trembling. With one hand, she clutched Ivy's arm; with the other, she tugged at a tight black curl. "We shouldn't. We should go back to teh tower. Stop up the entrance. There's voices here. They're crying. Voices and ghosts in the trees." She curled closer to Ivy. "I want to go home."

~~~

The man waved a hand and laughed. "Merely a trifle; it's simply a matter of rearranging the basic elements of material structure in your gowns, combined with a few illusions— but you ladies hardly care about the details. The transformation will last until you leave my realm. My power does not extend beyond the portal. Now, will you join me in the pavilon?" 

3.5. Bonus: Do Some Actual Spring Cleaning of Your Writer Self! (And share a picture!)
I don't really have a dedicated writing space anymore, so . . . yeah. No cleaning or pictures. Sorry.

I hope you enjoyed reading my answers to that tag! If you're still curious about Dust of Silver, keeep an eye out for my Beautiful People post (coming as soon as I can get it written) and potentially another writer-y tag. I'm doing alllll the tags, y'all.

Oh, and before I forget: tagging people!
-Emmarayn Redding
-Jem Jones
-Katie Grace
And, if anyone else wants to give this tag a try, feel free to steal it! I won't care!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)