Mary, I second (or third or two hundred and whatever) that sentiment! I will definitely continue to chip away at my manuscript. And throughout will not be shy about watching over the shoulder of the finalists and winner. Onward and upward ladies. Jessica

I love your spirit, Mary, and add my support in sharing and motivating all of our passions, dreams and dealing together with the bumps along the road.

reinstate sugar immediately.

Honestly, I am thrilled for those who made it to the next round - what an opportunity. Of course, I wish I were one of the eighteen, but the committee was tasked to find a project ‘they’ were passionate about and a writer with the savvy to make it all the way to the finish line. I sincerely thank each of them for taking the time to read our entries and I know, even if I was not one of the eighteen moving forward in this contest, I am capable of picking up my little whipped fanny and moving forward to the same finish line. Albeit now my finish line does not come with perks along the way, but if we band together in support of each other, we can each share in motivating and helping each other toward our own passion – a book to call our own. Many hugs and best wishes to all of us – may we each continue to keep our dream alive and well.

I suppose I made a fairly unwise decision in deciding to cut out sugar this week! At least I still have some coffee left in the coffee pot!

absolutely, mariana! bananas and chocolate... perfect. i'm glad someone is with me:) don't worry... after i'm done eating, i'll write about it. food is a running theme in my book so really, this can be considered work.

I'm with Meadow, except I don't drink, so it'll have to be the banana pudding. Can I get chocolate with that? Dark, please.

I'm going to keep doing what I have been doing faithfully since my submission. I will keep working on my book. I am thrilled that we get to look over the winner's shoulder to snag some inspiration and ideas. Maybe we can share some great ideas among ourselves, too. For starters, I have an idea and a question all in one package. I love my Kindle, and I especially love the ability to annotate and then pull the annotations over to my computer. I have done that for two books that are part of the bibliography for my work in progress. However, I am still a little uncomfortable with the fact that Kindle notes have location numbers, not page numbers. Is the world ready for this? I can't find a footnote model for a Kindle note, so I am for the moment using location numbers in the place of page numbers. Is anyone else trying to use Kindle versions for research and footnotes?

it's 2pm in new york... i'm breaking out the vodka! (i already did my yoga and went for a preemptive run in central park). then there's always banana pudding from the famous magnolia bakery if the vodka doesn't work. oh wait, did you mean what are we going to do with our writing projects? oh, that. my second cousin (is that what it is when it's your mom's cousin that really feels more like an uncle?)... anyway... my second cousin called the selection committee "dunderheads" and offered to stick "his russians" on them, which made me laugh and feel better even though i STRONGLY disagree with his assessment of the passion project committee who had - i'm sure - an incredibly hard task in choosing projects that had merit AND a chance of being published. with close to 300 entries, there's bound to be dozens that fit those parameters and still didn't get chosen. keep on keepin' on, ladies! :-)

I've been working on the narrative arc and am hoping to start pulling together a solid chapter outline. I've finished drafts of two chapters, just need to work on polishing them and get the final of three chapters ready to send out. My writing class is coming to an end, so I need to keep myself on a writing schedule so I don't lose the momentum I've started this summer.