Back to the Grindstone Tomorrow
Feb. 21st, 2010 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuI'm within shouting distance of the end of my novel. The image below will show that I'm a little over the target word count, but that's misleading. For one thing, I've cut back the target word count since I started, and for another, I still have one scene to revise (which will almost certainly shorten it), so a little padding won't hurt. But I'm close to the end.
And I'm glad of it. You hear me? Glad! I have not enjoyed these last three weeks, except intermittently, when I was producing new words and it was going well. Mostly it's been a long, slow slog, like hacking my way through the jungle with a machete. Not much fun. But it's been a valuable lesson. Next time, I will set my initial target firmly in the 90-100,000 word range, rather than something shorter which I then have to expand. Editing/revising is not my forte. (I suspect that one of the reasons I happily endorse Dean Wesley Smith's advice to write fast, do minimal revision, and then send a story out...is because that's my natural pattern. It fits how I write.)
Anyhow. My goal this week is to finish revising the story. Print it out. Start doing research on Publisher's Marketplace, to find five publishers who buy manuscripts of the same sort as mine. Let my First Reader (my lovely and talented wife) read it and give me her feedback. Then, unless it's awful, I will mail a cover letter, the first 5-10 pages of the story, and a synopsis to said publishers.
And then, immediately start writing something new. Probably a short story or two before I plunge into the next novel, whatever it turns out to be. I'm toying with the idea of trying a mystery, one set in a world of people with weird powers (kinda like the Wild Cards universe). Or maybe I'll start something entirely different. I don't know.
Project: Strange Attractors
Words Written Since Last Report: 6,049
Stories in Circulation: 11
Rejections: 30
Stories Accepted: SEVEN
Stories to Resubmit: 0
And I'm glad of it. You hear me? Glad! I have not enjoyed these last three weeks, except intermittently, when I was producing new words and it was going well. Mostly it's been a long, slow slog, like hacking my way through the jungle with a machete. Not much fun. But it's been a valuable lesson. Next time, I will set my initial target firmly in the 90-100,000 word range, rather than something shorter which I then have to expand. Editing/revising is not my forte. (I suspect that one of the reasons I happily endorse Dean Wesley Smith's advice to write fast, do minimal revision, and then send a story out...is because that's my natural pattern. It fits how I write.)
Anyhow. My goal this week is to finish revising the story. Print it out. Start doing research on Publisher's Marketplace, to find five publishers who buy manuscripts of the same sort as mine. Let my First Reader (my lovely and talented wife) read it and give me her feedback. Then, unless it's awful, I will mail a cover letter, the first 5-10 pages of the story, and a synopsis to said publishers.
And then, immediately start writing something new. Probably a short story or two before I plunge into the next novel, whatever it turns out to be. I'm toying with the idea of trying a mystery, one set in a world of people with weird powers (kinda like the Wild Cards universe). Or maybe I'll start something entirely different. I don't know.
Project: Strange Attractors
Words Written Since Last Report: 6,049
Stories in Circulation: 11
Rejections: 30
Stories Accepted: SEVEN
Stories to Resubmit: 0