Carol Moncado

Current Facebook Status: Check out the album on my page [that I shared from Gloria’s page] for a few pics from the 1984 Pep Rally vid.

Currently Playing in the Background: Criminal Minds finale

A friend of mine send me a DVD. 1984. Pep Rally.

First shot is my dad. Complete with his 1980s afro. =D

A bit later is my mom. For those of you unfamiliar with my story, this video was taken less than a year before she was diagnosed with stomach cancer and about 15 months before she died. That’s nostalgic. Bittersweet.

But fun.

She put on a hat and coach’s shirt and pretended to be my dad. There was also a bunch of other friends. I’m working to get it uploaded to YouTube sometime soon. If I do, I’ll post a link. Not that many of you have any idea who any of them are, but that’s okay ;).

I finished classes on Tuesday. Submitted grades. Am done for the semester. WOOHOO! Was paying our fabu babysitter for both days this week, I took the 3yo to her house and went to Panera for a few hours.

While I was there, I wrote two little words.

The End.

I finished!!!!! the rough draft for Nick and Becca’s story!

WOOHOO!!!!!

It needs a lot of work.

A.

Lot.

Of.

Work.

To get it shiny, but the bones of it are there. I got them into danger. I got them out of danger. More than once. So I think I can tweak and twist and cut and add and finagle until it’s something workable.

Maybe.

I think.

Or maybe somebody else could. I don’t know that I’m capable of it.

/sigh/

Sure. All authors go through self-doubt. Wonder if they’re good enough. Go through the ‘this is the worst thing I’ve ever written… at least until the next one.’

To be fair, romantic suspense doesn’t come naturally to me. I’m sure that’s part of it. But at the same time…

I read a partial MS by a gal I may be doing some critiquing with. It’s not done. About 170 pages finished. But it was…

P. H. E. N. O. M. O. N. A. L.

Seriously.

How this gal isn’t published already is completely beyond me.

And I wonder what makes me think I can compete.

It’s not just the genre thing [this one was also romantic suspense]; I’ve critiqued for some others in other genres I feel the same way about. I love them to pieces [you probably know who you are ;)]. Then I look at how the words are assembled. How phrases are used.

That elusive ‘voice’.

Steven King said, “Stephanie Meyer can’t write worth a darn.”* But he went on to say that she’s a great story teller. Not a great writer. A great story teller.

I wonder sometimes if that’s where I fall. Not on the great scale, mind you, but writer v. story teller. A great writer can make an okay story shine. A great story teller can sometimes catch a lucky break like Meyer did.

I have stories. I can tell them. Can I tell them well enough? Can I move from story teller to writer? Or am I kidding myself?

/sigh/

I don’t know where I’m going with this. Except that I’m not sure I have what it takes. As of Monday, I’ll be officially rejected by one agent [being honest, I’m not expecting a partial request**].

Maybe I’m just down in the dumps. I don’t know. But I wonder – how do you know? How do you know when you’re ready? Or when it’s time to give up.

But to end with a smile… Here’s a pic of me from the DVD. I was 9. Plus Dad with his fro.

*Don’t ask me where the quote is from. It’s all over the web.

**If I’m being really, really honest with myself, Unbreak Her Heart is unlikely to be my first published novel. Assuming I get published, it’ll likely be something else first and possibly Unbreak her Heart later.