Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Novel Notions

My husband took the day off of work yesterday for the sole purpose of sitting down and reading my whole book. I don't think I mention often enough how much I love this man and how I got the best man in the entire universe for a husband, hands down. But it's true.

In spite of my determination to be patient, I did some research for literary agents yesterday, and have found two perfect agencies to send off the query and book proposal to. But I will clamp down my impetuous streak and make sure I've perfected the manuscript first, and synopsis. It's a one shot deal with each agent, and I'd hate for a few weeks left polishing to make it an easy reject for them.

So that's what I'm doing today - writing the world's greatest query letter and synopsis... ;)

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Strange July

This has been a bizarro couple of weeks. Last week, for about seven days straight, I was an emotional PMS-y wreck. I'm not usually a cry-er, other than PMS, but even then, it's like maybe once or twice a whole month. But last week PMS from hell decides to descend out of nowhere and there was one day I swore I woke up crying and went to bed crying!! It was like some strange weepy robot had taken over my body!

And this week - ta da! Back to my normal happy go lucky self. Bizarro and disturbing. But back to the good times. Which this week has been, with minor interruptions of wanting to pull out my hair because I feel overwhelmed with the Persphone novel for young adults I've been working on for about four years. I finished it... again. And it's much, much, much better than the draft I did two years ago. And the story I think is solidly good. It's logical and I've worked hard to make it move, move, move. But now I have this 300 page bohemouth to edit. I feel like every time I work through and cut and hack and edit a chapter, then print it out, a hundred new things pop up to fix. So I never get forward, because you can always perfect what has been already edited. It seems like an impossible, never-ending process, and how is one person supposed to do this?? I keep thinking about those damn thank-you pages at the end of novels where they list off a ton of people who helped them and I'm like - YES! - you need a freaking team to produce a book. How is one person supposed to do all this?!!

I'm still going to my writer's group, but it takes a month to work through two chapters, and my finished version is twenty-one chapters. And I'm freaking impatient. I think impatience might be one of my defining characteristics actually.

So today I sat my butt down in a chair for five hours and made a detailed outline. There's just so much that happens in a novel, how can you even begin to grasp the whole thing in the same scope? I keep trying. At least paging through the entire thing and pointing out the key moments of each chapter and scene did get me really excited about it. I think in the end, this can be something special. But then I try to tamp down those feelings, because I thought similar things about the draft two years ago, and it was crap. Anyway, I'm still aiming for workable draft by the end of the summer that I'll start submitting out places. Then I'll have school to occupy my time, which will give me four months away from it, and fresh eyes to edit again at Christmas, and send out more places. My eyeballs hurt from looking at the computer screen all day. And how did it get to be the end of freakin' July already???

Friday, July 10, 2009

The Good Times Continue

Know I've been out of pocket lately. I've just not been much for communicating in any way lately - I'm backlogged on emailing people, seeing friends, blogging - I've just been taking this space lately. This beautiful pristine space just to BE and to DO. What I've been doing is writing.
I quit my job totally (I'd been slowing down on hours, until I finally just decided it wasn't worth the stress on my body even part-time). And I've been writing, and writing, and writing (randomly I'm back to working on the Persephone novel for young adults, which my goal is to complete in fair shape by the end of the summer). And I completely love my life and know that this is completely unfair and nobody gets to actually DO what they WANT to be doing, and believe me, I feel very lucky!

I just got the official acceptance today into the Master's in Literature program at Texas State. I'd talked to the advisor after taking the four extra undergrad class throughout last year, and he said everything should be fine, but it's nice to have it in writing now. Yes, I will be a graduate student. Deal sealed and locked. I have to wait until mid-August before I can register for classes, but I'm still super-stoked. I'll be taking two classes either way.

If anyone's interested, you can check out a short-short story published in a little online zine at: MudLuscious.