Le ugh

I really hate school. Gets in the way of all the stuff I'd rather do . . . Psht, studying, whatever. Anyway, here's a goal list for this weekend/next week:

• Today: start my paper for maternity before embarking on my Epic Evening of Epicness. If home early enough, work on studying Nurs372.
• Sunday: Finish paper if necessary, study for Nurs372 and Nurs352. Prepare for Sim4 Monday morning
• Monday: Study for Nurs372 predominantly, also work on 352.
• Tuesday: Study for Nurs352
• Wednesday: Die.

Totally feasible, am I right? Honestly the maternity paper wouldn't be so bad if it didn't have to be in APA format and use references and etc. As it is, it's the formatting that totally kills me. Urgh.

So I didn't do any writing at all yesterday. I actually wanted to, but I had another paper - this one for Psych - that I had to work on instead. I have also been thinking a lot about publishing. I know it's early for that, but I'm enjoying the research of it, if I'm honest. The more articles I read by various authors in my genre, the more I'm convinced self-publishing is the way to go. Like I said, though, it's a long way off so I'm still deciding. If I do decide to self-publish then we get into questions about which website (CreateSpace beating out Lulu at the moment because of the Kindle accessibility, but please contribute if you're knowledgeable on the subject), whether to get my own ISBN, whether I should start my own publishing company for my work (I'm leaning toward yes), how to market, etc. It's all a little overwhelming but I figure I'm at least a year away from wanting to do anything of that nature, so I have time to think about it. No rush, right?

Anyway, I was thinking about what to write next, too. As much as I'd love to work on the sequel to what I just wrote, it's not like I'm on a time table, and honestly I think it'd be good if I take a step back from that one and edit it first. It'll give me some time to thinking about elements of the world that I am not necessarily happy about, and really solidify what I'm trying to accomplish in that book. So in that vein I started thinking about what else I could possibly work on.

It occurred to me that when I was in High School I wrote a short story that I liked quite a lot, and had wanted to work on more. So I dug the thing out and re-read it. It's clumsy and not as well-written as I'd like now (of course, this is seven years later, too lol) but it was pretty good, and it has a really interesting premise. So I might work on that next. Basically, it's about the government and robot assassins. But not like Terminator, I'm talking people who are hired to assassinate robots.

And who doesn't love robots? I sure do. That blurry line between human and machine that we're getting closer to every year is always interesting, so I'd love to explore the possible future of AI a little more.

So yeah, that's my plan. Work on that piece while I clean up the one I just finished and get that squared away to the point I'm happy with it. And as far as that plan goes, it's still up in the air, but the general strategy is:

• I edit the ever-loving crap out of it and re-format it until I'm vaguely happy with it.
• I give it to my copy-editor (aka my mother, God love that woman - she puts up with me)
• I make changes on her suggestions, work it out a little more, figure out more of what I'm looking for. Hopefully at this point I'm fairly happy with what's going on in the book.
• I give the book to a few friends who are interested in editing for me. I'd like them to read for both spelling/grammar/that jazz, as well as flow and content. Hopefully after I make these changes, I'm pretty close to the final piece.
• I give the final project to people who genuinely want to read it - maybe about five people. Get their feedback and hopefully don't need to make any more major changes.
• Publish.

It's a logical progression, imho. What I'm most nervous about is flow and content - what if it's not exciting? What if it's interesting? What if it's confusing? That's why I'm looking forward to reading it again; I thought it satisfied all those criteria when I was writing it, but by giving it time to breathe like a nice Merlot and then coming back to it, I might see something I didn't at first.

Also, it occurred to me the other day that this pretty much has become a writing blog. Does anyone have any problems with that? Ah, who am I kidding, no one's even reading it. :P Yay rambling for my own sake! Whatevs, helps me gets my thoughts straight! :D