Spread the Love

There's some great charity auctions going on right now. It's a win-win situation for you, because you donate money, receive some truly awesome things in the process, and you get to help out those in need.

So, here's a link to Joe Selby's post pulling most of the current charities together. Go look. You can win a critique and phone call from Kristen Nelson, among many other awesome things. 

Also, here is another link for Crits for Water. It's still running, you guys, and there's some awesome crits left, like from Sara Megibow.

And finally, Rachelle Gardner had a guest blogger that really spoke to me today. Marcus Brotherton talks about how you define your success. It's really easy during revision to loose sight of your goal, or forget what that goal is all together. For me, I don't want my goal to be "finish revision so I can get this puppy published". That's sort of putting the cart before the horse to me, and also, not why I am writing. 

I write because I love it. Plain and simple. I love telling stories. I want to be published because I want more people to read my stories. Sure, I would like the validation of having an agent fall in love with my book, and readers sending me nice emails about the characters, but I've been writing for years without those things.

Instead of feeling pressured and rushed to finished revision, like I have been, I should be remembering my real goal: revise the book so it matches with what I want it to be. Everything else will come with time. I just have to be patient and focus on what matters the most right now. Revising the book.

Soon enough it will be time for queries and agents, but that's not this day. This day I focus wholly on the book and making it as good as I can.

Crits for Water Campaign

Today is a super awesome day. I am one happy little writer. 

Yesterday I participated in the Crits for Water auction for a critique from Janice Hardy. It's a great set of auctions raising money for charity: water. Katherine Brauer, an amazing writer, has put together critiques from authors, agents, and editors, in addition to volunteering her own time and critiques, in order to raise money so people can have clean water. You can see the schedule of events here.

What I didn't expect was to win. The auction ran until midnight, and I assumed that someone was going to outbid me whilst I slumbered.

But that was not the case!

I happily woke up to a very nice email from Kat congratulating me on my win! And what a win it is! Janice is a pure genius when it comes to editing and critique, in addition to being a really fabulous writer. Have you read her MG Fantasy series The Healing Wars yet? No? Well you should. They are fantastic.


It gets better. I am signed up to take a POV workshop from Janice this coming Saturday. The bookstore where the workshop is taking place emailed me this morning, letting me know that I need to submit some pages from my WIP for critique prior to the workshop.


I am totally and utterly floored. I am also panicking because my WIP isn't edited yet, but that's okay. I cannot wait to receive feedback and find out how I can improve my book.

If you're sitting there, wishing that you could get some awesome feedback too, it's not too late. There are plenty of amazing writers and agents offering crits for auction at Crits for Water. And if you don't want to participate in an auction, or get outbid, you can still donate and Kat will critique your work. 


Yes, that's right. For every 1 dollar you donate, she will critique 250 words of your MS. It's that simple. You don't have to be rich to donate, and even if you only have 20 extra dollars, that's still 5,000 words of your MS. 

If you don't have spare money, you can always pimp the Crits for Water campaign on your blog or tweet about it. It's amazing how many people don't have access to clean drinking water.

The best part about this entire thing? I just helped 12 people gain access to clean drinking water.