As you might have guessed, I’ve been workin’.
It’s been a busy, busy week. Any week that Steve travels a lot is busy for me, because I like to take advantage of the absolute peace and quiet brought on by his absence. No sounds of sports on the TV, no BlackBerry pinging every five minutes (his, not mine), no cupboards opening and closing in the kitchen constantly. We have two cats and two kittens and everybody’s always so excited when he’s home. When he’s not, everybody’s quiet. Including me.
I took a long, hard look at Creep this week, and finally, blessed with some time and distance from it (I haven’t done anything to the manuscript since October when I began querying), I decided to make some changes to the opening. There were areas I was able to identify (looking at it now with somewhat fresh eyes) where the tension lagged slightly. So I reworked it a little, deleting chapter two entirely and shifting a few others around. I ended up cutting about 3,000 words. Sigh. We’ll see if it makes any difference going forward. I still have a lot of agents to query and my next round will be in early spring.
You might have noticed that the query count box to the right of this post has disappeared. Much as I loved sharing my progress with all of you (and I did – you know I have no problem showing you every wart in this process, which is better known as the Ninth Circle of Hell), it is a public blog on the internet. Fortunately or unfortunately. Which means that anyone, including an interested or curious agent, could Google me and find me on Facebook, Twitter (not that I do anything on Twitter), or yes, even track me down here on the blog. I doubt they’d bother… but you never know. Do I want agents to know how many other agents have rejected my query? Do I want agents to know how many other agents have rejected my manuscript? I’m trying to sell my book, after all… and while everybody in publishing knows how many rejections the average writer gets before success finds them, I’ve decided it’s not really an effective marketing tool at this stage of the game.
So, no more status box. But of course I have my stats and counts all neatly organized in an Excel spreadsheet (hello, it is anal little me!), so if you’re ever curious about how it’s all going, ask. I’ll tell. (And pssst… it’s going okay. The query’s working.)
In other news, I’ve started a new novel. No idea if the concept will pan out as I only have a couple thousand words down, but I have a clear vision for the book (although I haven’t figured out how it should all end).
I seem unable to move forward with Magnolia. I keep tinkering with individual chapters that have already been written, changing and tweaking certain things, but not really adding anything new. I have a feeling that Magnolia is going to be the manuscript I come back to when I don’t have any other ideas. At the rate I’m going, it’ll take ten years to write. But that’s all right. I want to see where this new book goes. I feel all tingly about it, the way I did when I started writing Creep.
Working title for the new project is Beautiful Disaster.
Did anyone see the new iPad? It’s fancy schmancy. But it’s got about 10,000 more features than I need in an e-reader (because it’s not a dedicated e-reader… e-reading is just one of the components), and at $499, way out of my league. And too big to fit in my purse.
Steve’s drooling over it, though.
Happy Friday!