Just over four months ago I started my second novel, while my first one is still making rounds among agents, waiting for someone to feel enough of a connection to it to ask to see more than the synopsis or first 50 pages. So far no nibbles on that one, but that hasn’t slowed me down any in writing. Now that I have a good writing schedule set up, I’ve been doing a pretty good job of staying on-task. Which means only the blog has been suffering. Sorry about that.
Anyway, last weekend I finished my second novel, which I probably don’t have to say is a huge, exciting, terrifying thing. And now I get to repeat the process again. I’m doing a full revision right now, smoothing out some bumps in the time-frame of the story and looking for overly conventional word choices to change. Next I’ll use one of my beloved writing nights, when hubby keeps the girls and I duck off to a local hotel for the night, to read the entire thing out loud. It’s my favorite editing tactic, the only way I know to “hear” those old familiar words with fresh ears. Then, I’ll send it to friends I can trust to find my typos, continuity problems, underdeveloped characters, weak points in plot development, and who will hopefully tell me if the ending is a sufficient payoff for the setup (to quote a grad school writing prof of mine). Then comes the synopsis, the query letter, and a list of agents to target with my hopes and dreams for this little work of mine.
But first, I’m going to spend a few more days just looking at the finished product, the collection of files on my computer that make up this little book of mine, and marveling that I’ve managed to write two novels now. The third one is already taking shape in my mind, a little seed that’s just starting to sprout. I don’t know if this new career venture is going to work out for me or not, but I have to say I genuinely love the process, and so I’ll keep it going, until I simply can’t anymore. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll get one (or more) of these novels published.
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