A Long and Winding Road
So, tonight, I finished the fourth rewrite of Leaven of Malice. I thought some of you, particularly off-LJ friends or new-to-this-account friends, or even just friendly friends, might want to know how I feel about it, what this means for the immediate future, what my plans are for publication (if any) and what's next on the writerly agenda.
So -- let's answer this first question first. I've been saying for about a month that I was only "ten pages away" -- and ten pages stretched in twenty, into thirty, into forty. On last week Sunday, I said, I don't care what I have to do. I'm going to finish it this week.
And I did. It took a couple of 15-and-20 pages days.
This draft is 55500 words long and is 210 pages, double-spaced, in Word. (in case you like numbers).
What are my plans for the immediate future? Well, first you should know some facts.
* This is the fourth complete rewrite of Leaven of Malice. This story has had three titles, two main character changes and a major shift in tone over the course of the last four years.
*This is, however, the first draft of this rewrite. Which means (almost) no one except me has seen it.
So what happens next? Well, katmorning edits it. In the mean time, I start making a list of agents to query. Also, this will be November, so I will start work on writing an original novel based on a fanfic I've already completed so that I have something different to show any interested agent. (Due respect to every writer out there going: ONLY ONE EDITOR? BUT YOU NEED A WRITER'S CIRCLE. YOU NEED A CRITIQUE GROUP. But I have no functional spine. And if I let my head get too crowded with too many voices I will become paralyzed. What works for you will not always work for me.)
Then, katmorning will send me back her edit. This will send me into a tailspin of depression, but I will QUICKLY BOUNCE BACK THIS TIME.
At this point, I start ripping the draft apart. I will rewrite scenes and cut-and-paste dialogue, and there's already one major shift I think I need to make, but we'll see what happens.
Hopefully, at this point, I'm pretty confident in it. If not -- well, I have another "reader" in mind to give me an opinion.
SO. AFTER THAT.
We start querying the agents. Hopefully this happens by February or March of 2012. Ideally, the publishing process goes Query-Agent-Publishing contract, but we'll see how it goes.
If, after the period of one year, I do not get an agent for Leaven of Malice, I will shelf it. I will push to finish The Silver Dollar Paradigm (original version) and the YA Merlin cyberpunk series I plan to work on. If I cannot sell any of THOSE projects, I will turn to indy-publishing.
But Chi, you say, you were so gung-ho about self-pub.
And I think it's great, actually. I'm super excited to read bloodwrites self-pub release later this year and some of my other friends making inroads on that -- but I feel like if you go that route, then you've got to be a certain kind of a person. And I am not that type of person. The more I thought about it, the more it freaked me out.
I am willing to self-promote. I am willing to talk my writing until I am blue in the face. But please, please, please do not ask me to make any marketing or artistic decisions or keep track of money or... any of that.
So. Yeah. That was probably more than you wanted to know.
LONG STORY SHORT. I AM DONE. I AM DONE. I AM DONE DONE DONE.
for, you know, now.
So -- let's answer this first question first. I've been saying for about a month that I was only "ten pages away" -- and ten pages stretched in twenty, into thirty, into forty. On last week Sunday, I said, I don't care what I have to do. I'm going to finish it this week.
And I did. It took a couple of 15-and-20 pages days.
This draft is 55500 words long and is 210 pages, double-spaced, in Word. (in case you like numbers).
What are my plans for the immediate future? Well, first you should know some facts.
* This is the fourth complete rewrite of Leaven of Malice. This story has had three titles, two main character changes and a major shift in tone over the course of the last four years.
*This is, however, the first draft of this rewrite. Which means (almost) no one except me has seen it.
So what happens next? Well, katmorning edits it. In the mean time, I start making a list of agents to query. Also, this will be November, so I will start work on writing an original novel based on a fanfic I've already completed so that I have something different to show any interested agent. (Due respect to every writer out there going: ONLY ONE EDITOR? BUT YOU NEED A WRITER'S CIRCLE. YOU NEED A CRITIQUE GROUP. But I have no functional spine. And if I let my head get too crowded with too many voices I will become paralyzed. What works for you will not always work for me.)
Then, katmorning will send me back her edit. This will send me into a tailspin of depression, but I will QUICKLY BOUNCE BACK THIS TIME.
At this point, I start ripping the draft apart. I will rewrite scenes and cut-and-paste dialogue, and there's already one major shift I think I need to make, but we'll see what happens.
Hopefully, at this point, I'm pretty confident in it. If not -- well, I have another "reader" in mind to give me an opinion.
SO. AFTER THAT.
We start querying the agents. Hopefully this happens by February or March of 2012. Ideally, the publishing process goes Query-Agent-Publishing contract, but we'll see how it goes.
If, after the period of one year, I do not get an agent for Leaven of Malice, I will shelf it. I will push to finish The Silver Dollar Paradigm (original version) and the YA Merlin cyberpunk series I plan to work on. If I cannot sell any of THOSE projects, I will turn to indy-publishing.
But Chi, you say, you were so gung-ho about self-pub.
And I think it's great, actually. I'm super excited to read bloodwrites self-pub release later this year and some of my other friends making inroads on that -- but I feel like if you go that route, then you've got to be a certain kind of a person. And I am not that type of person. The more I thought about it, the more it freaked me out.
I am willing to self-promote. I am willing to talk my writing until I am blue in the face. But please, please, please do not ask me to make any marketing or artistic decisions or keep track of money or... any of that.
So. Yeah. That was probably more than you wanted to know.
LONG STORY SHORT. I AM DONE. I AM DONE. I AM DONE DONE DONE.
for, you know, now.