Caution! I Tend to Ramble.

I love the Deadline Dames blog. It is a simple fact of life, of my life that is. They have been such a huge influence on my attempt at writing a book. While sometimes they depress me (see last post), they then lift me up! The latest blog, Just One More Page, talks about how a book goes from idea, to clay on the table(first draft), shaping the clay (2nd draft), making it beautiful(Final draft) and then adding the glaze(edits and proofs.) Now, I realize I will probably be doing more than 3 drafts, that still doesn't ruin how this blog made me feel much better.
Most things don't just become instantly beautiful and good, they require lot's of hard work! But if there's nothing there to work on(aka that 1st draft), then there is nothing there to make beautiful and good. Thinking about this in horse-terms, if you're training a horse to be rideable, the first draft corelation would be establishing a good relationship with the horse. No relationship=no foundation.
Now, I haven't written much since the last post, but I have: went to 2 nieces basketball games, finished my Christmas shopping, cleaned the bathroom, fed another round bale to the constantly eating beasties out in the field, had quiet time with my hubby... So obviously I have somewhat twisted priorities, but that's ok. I am where I am, aka in a position to have some spare time to write, because of wanting all of that stuff that I've done the past few days. I didn't know that having a baby and moving back to be near family would also free me up to write. I'll consider it a bonus :) And I won't be disappointed that it's not like all those executives at the banks bonuses :)
Anyways, since the last depressed blog, I've written 1,375 words. I wrote a scene with my top girl's top guy and I'm feeling like I've gotten to know him a little bit better. On top of that, I've realized that while I've gotten short bio's on all my characters, I still don't know them all that well. I feel like that by the end of the first draft, I should know them well enough that I could flesh out a better bio if I wanted to, but more importantly, I'll be able to edit better by then because I'll know the characters better. I've seen a lot of blogs and comments where other writers do extensive bio's first. I'm sure that works for them, but for me, right now, I don't mind how I'm going at it. Hopefully I'll be published one day and then I'll be required to be a bit more organized to get other books bought before they're written. For right now I'm using this first book as a "get to know me" phase. I'll figure out what worked and what didn't and go from there. Ok, now I've rambled enough, I'm off to... well who knows!