Magic To Do

My goodness - can the holiday season be almost over?  It feels like we were just putting up the tree yesterday.  So much work to get ready and it's all over in a flash.  Almost all the presents have been delivered.  My mailed a package to my friend who lives in the UK on December 14 and she still hasn't received it.  Since USPS doesn't track to UK there's nothing they can do about it being missing.  Other than that all other packages were delivered without a hitch.

Once the new year comes I'll be doing some organizing and after that it'll be full speed ahead on the querying front.  I had made the decision to step back for the holidays for a few reasons.  First, because many agents on my list were closing to queries until after the new year.  And, I decided I wanted to concentrate on enjoying the season instead of being stressed about waiting for replies.  Also, I wanted to try and poke at my manuscript a bit.  I'm hyper aware of my overuse of the word "that" so I did make an honest effort to find ways around using it.  And, I was under the impression I had already done a search for it and "just".  When you've gone over a manuscript time and time again it's easy for things to blend together to an extent.  So, I must have dreamed doing that search because I was up until six am Sunday deleting over a thousand of those two extra words.  Yes, a thousand.  Since my character is telling a story I can get away with some use of the word "that" but not that much.

I've also been paying some attention to Query Tracker to work on my list.  Who changed their genres, who's closed, who's branching out on their own, etc.  This is something I always try to keep up on whether I'm in querying mode or not.

This week I'm going to be working on finding my desk.  I seem to have misplaced it during the holiday season thanks to all the packages, Christmas cards, and catelogs.  Just like Spock it will be found.  This I swear.