You'll, tide
Friday was the deadline I gave to myself to finish the novel. Friday was the deadline because I wanted to give myself a month to thoroughly edit the draft into something I could feel confident about, before submitting again. In late fall, a friend pointed out that the open submission might not be a yearly thing. I chose not to verify that, because I didn't want to sap any energy from the process. I didn't finish on Friday, but Saturday was a decently productive day. I think over the course of the whole week I turned in around 12,000 words. That makes me feel pretty good, but it also makes me feel like I planned it all fairly poorly that I had to crank out so much there at the end. I had a year.
And as one might expect, there is no open house at the publisher in question. There are other places, of course, but the reason I was attracted to that publisher, and others, was because of their seeming willingness to accept writing that was a bit non-standard. They seemed that much more willing to take a chance on something less conventional. In real life, just about every day I'm interacting with other humans, I get strange looks. From the way I think about things, to the way I talk about them, there's an adjustment period, a kind of translation that's necessary. And writing is nothing if not a conversational interaction between a recipient and spinner of dreams. So, I'm looking for that kind of home for my fables, and its disappointing when my earnest efforts don't quite transmit.
Also during the last week, right on time, my mind was flooded with future ideas. On Wednesday at 5:00 am a contemporary short fiction idea woke me out of a deep sleep. I laid there for a few moments wondering what had happened, and why, and what I had seen or heard or smelled or eaten to cause such a thing. Even later the same day, I tentatively poked at the idea, put hands around it to see if it would vanish under any weight as if it weren't real. It stayed; it even grew as I thought about it.
So, much like the year in a month's time, I'm looking to turn some pages, figuratively and literally. I had a kind of breakthrough about the children's story I tried and failed at in previous years. This season I'm going to finish it, terrible though it might be. I have a longer list of things I want to see happen, but the top half of the to-do list, is the part I like to call the "will be done" list. I will also be editing the novel I just finished, polishing it and what not. I'd like to complete the first act of the play I have been outlining. And I'm going to make some decisions about what to do with the rest of my urban fantasy series, the one suffering under crippling difficulties at the current publisher. Honestly, I had forgotten about those old stories, and I guess so much time had passed, I had resigned them to twisting in a kind of limbo on into perpetuity. But then I remembered that I had self published, that I could self publish. But to do that, I need editing help, different eyes than my own. And I need cover art, something to present as an image for each book, and the series as a whole.
All of which is to say I'm going to be busy. I'm not really sure I'd have it any other way.
And as one might expect, there is no open house at the publisher in question. There are other places, of course, but the reason I was attracted to that publisher, and others, was because of their seeming willingness to accept writing that was a bit non-standard. They seemed that much more willing to take a chance on something less conventional. In real life, just about every day I'm interacting with other humans, I get strange looks. From the way I think about things, to the way I talk about them, there's an adjustment period, a kind of translation that's necessary. And writing is nothing if not a conversational interaction between a recipient and spinner of dreams. So, I'm looking for that kind of home for my fables, and its disappointing when my earnest efforts don't quite transmit.
Also during the last week, right on time, my mind was flooded with future ideas. On Wednesday at 5:00 am a contemporary short fiction idea woke me out of a deep sleep. I laid there for a few moments wondering what had happened, and why, and what I had seen or heard or smelled or eaten to cause such a thing. Even later the same day, I tentatively poked at the idea, put hands around it to see if it would vanish under any weight as if it weren't real. It stayed; it even grew as I thought about it.
So, much like the year in a month's time, I'm looking to turn some pages, figuratively and literally. I had a kind of breakthrough about the children's story I tried and failed at in previous years. This season I'm going to finish it, terrible though it might be. I have a longer list of things I want to see happen, but the top half of the to-do list, is the part I like to call the "will be done" list. I will also be editing the novel I just finished, polishing it and what not. I'd like to complete the first act of the play I have been outlining. And I'm going to make some decisions about what to do with the rest of my urban fantasy series, the one suffering under crippling difficulties at the current publisher. Honestly, I had forgotten about those old stories, and I guess so much time had passed, I had resigned them to twisting in a kind of limbo on into perpetuity. But then I remembered that I had self published, that I could self publish. But to do that, I need editing help, different eyes than my own. And I need cover art, something to present as an image for each book, and the series as a whole.
All of which is to say I'm going to be busy. I'm not really sure I'd have it any other way.
Comments
Post a Comment