Writing Status Update

I haven’t done one of these for a while, and I have a few minutes to spare, so here goes.

The Novel: This is still doing the query rounds. I’ve had form rejections, but there are still a number of agents from whom I have yet to hear. It’s been nearly three months for a few of them, and I know some of these are “we-respond-to-every-query” types (as opposed to “no-response-means-no” types). So I wonder, do I re-query? Do I just wait patiently, knowing that they’ve celebrated Thanksgiving, and had other reasons not to look at queries (e.g., keeping up with current clients, negotiating contracts, celebrating debut releases…)? Right now, I think I’m happy to wait, trusting that my query actually made it to agent inboxes, and didn’t bounce, and didn’t end up caught in spam filters. There are many more agents I need to query, so I’m not too anxious… yet!

The WIP: About a month ago, I wrote an article about POV, and how I had decided to change the POV of my WIP to FP as opposed to TPC (translation: I had decided to change the Point of View of my Work in Progress to First Person as opposed to Third Person Close–see the article for an explanation of these terms, though you can probably figure them out if you aren’t familiar with them already). I had already written three chapters of the novel in TPC, but decided to go back and re-write it in FP. With this re-write, I also decided to break the chapters up a little differently. My original first three chapters were a little long (at least IMO), so I broke them up into shorter chapters, breaking each chapter at a point where (I hope) the reader will want to continue to see what happens next (not necessarily “cliff-hanger” but at least carrot-dangling). Having done that for the first couple of chapters, I let it sit for a few weeks over Thanksgiving. And although I had told myself (and mentioned it either here or in comments somewhere) that I would try to resist revising and keep going with the writing until the novel is finished… I went back and re-read what I had written so far. Okay, so I justified it with the excuse that, after a few weeks I needed to get back into the voice and mindset of the story. But when I re-read it, something wasn’t right about it. I started to think the voice just wasn’t quite right… and perhaps I need to stick with TPC… and I started to have memories of LEVIATHAN and DIVERGENT and LIKE MANDARIN and how wonderfully written they are and what an incompetent buffoon I am… (been there too, have you? Yeah…). But as I continued reading, I started to see a little sparkle. It wasn’t really all that bad. So what was the problem? Then I saw it. The opening paragraph. It sucks. It sucks so bad it threatens to create a black hole right there in Scrivener. And its complete suckiness overshadows everything else. And so you know what I did? I carried on writing. I DIDN’T revise the opening paragraph. Aren’t you proud of me? 🙂 I know that opening will need to change, but I want to do it when I’ve finished the novel, and I’m really sure of the voice and the direction it’s going. That opening is so important, it can wait. And that’s where I am with the WIP.

I still have other novel ideas, one of which I might develop as a freebie for my blog readers. Not that I don’t think people would buy it, but the nature of the story begs for it to be a giveaway. Intrigued? I hope so.

That’s all for now. Have a great Thursday!