Fiction Thursday (or just insert whatever the hell day you want)

  • October 21, 2010

One of these days, it would be nice not to have to start my blog posts by apologizing.

But, sorry.

I know I’ve been really MIA lately, but after working forty hours a week, and making sure Dave and the offspring have food and clean underwear, I only have a little bit of time to write, and I’m concentrating on manuscript revisions. I am almost to the halfway point, and I am so ready to be done. It’s not that I don’t like revisions, because I love this part, but revising a novel is much harder than writing a first or second draft, and one of these days, I’d like to get the rest of my life back.

This is just my opinion, and I’m not sure if other writers feel this way, but revising means you have to fix everything that isn’t working. You can’t say to yourself, “I’m not thrilled with this section, but I’ll clean it up during revisions because, um, that would be now.

The wonderful thing, however, is that after the revision stage, you’re one step closer to final editing and polishing, and I’m really looking forward to that.

For those of you who will be beta reading for me, expect the manuscript sometime in February or March. I’d like to start querying in April, if possible. I started writing this book last April so if I meet all my deadlines, it will have taken about a year from start to finish. Not too bad considering I worked full time for much of it.

Also, I can’t say enough about my wonderful author-beta reader. I am absolutely indebted to her, with no idea how to repay. I am getting ready to send her my next batch of pages soon (on Halloween), and her feedback on the previous installments has been nothing short of spectacular. She is that good.

She paid me the highest compliment by writing this on the last page I sent her “Now I want the next 50 pages right away because I’m definitely hooked. Take your time, of course, but just a kudos, this is where you want the reader.”

Feedback like that is why I never hit snooze when the alarm goes off at 5:00 AM. I get out of bed, fire up the laptop, and get one page closer.

Thanks for still stopping by. I really appreciate it!

Tracey

Fiction Saturday

  • October 2, 2010

Totally glossing over the fact that there was no Fiction Friday last week and that this week’s installment is happening on Saturday.

First things first, Snooki sold a book. Say it with me: WTF?

It’s bad enough that Tori Spelling and Lauren Conrad are crowding the shelves at my local Barnes and Noble. But now Snooki? Really, seriously?

I mentioned in my last post (eons ago) that I found a fabulous beta reader (okay actually, she found me on Absolute Write.

I was blown away by the amount of time she spent on my manuscript. I sent her a PDF of the first fifty pages and she edited them, scanned them, and sent them back. On the left margin, she made a note of the things she liked,

The are two things driving me right now: my beta reader’s feedback is the first. She said she thought I had a real chance with this story. I wasn’t sure how the premise would be received, or if it would “work”, so it’s very encouraging to hear that. To me, the writing can be fixed, but if the premise doesn’t work, you’ve got a problem. And I am firmly in the “story versus writing” camp. I want to read a great story, and if it keeps me turning the pages, you won’t see me getting all highbrow about the writing. People love to criticize Stephenie Meyer’s writing, but if Twilight can make me stay up until 2:00 AM reading, she’s doing somethign right (and probably laughing her ass off all the way to the bank).

I’ll write more about the premise as I get closer to querying (and I’ll post the query letter too so you can see what I’m sending to agents).

This has been the most amazing experience and I encourage anyone who’s ever wanted to write a novel to, in the spirit of Nike, just.do.it.

I probably won’t be querying until after the first of the year which means my novel took about nine months to write. I’m rewarding myself with a Kindle as soon as I type THE END.

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