Back on Track

Life is challenging. But writing has always come easy for me. If I'm in the zone, I can easily write 5,000 words in a day, edit for hours only getting up to pee and eat cereal, compose a full-length song on my guitar in minutes...speed and endurance are my writing strengths. I go go go. I don't stop.

But I did stop. October hit. The writing stopped. The editing stopped. The singing stopped. Life continued. I partied hard. I think I lost my mind at one point, but it's November again and I'm back on track.

Initially I thought I'd be writing a new novel for NANO, but alas I went with what my heart wanted and that was to finish my revisions to my dearest novel, WALKING OFF PLUTO. While I know this novel isn't my most creative manuscript or most exciting, it's the most honest thing I've ever written. I've been at war with the novel, battling other's opinions of it, battling what I think it ought to be vs what my readers will want it to be. And the conclusion is...

It is what it is.

It's about life. Life isn't always exciting. Life isn't always fair. Life isn't always happy. Life sucks sometimes. But for some reason when we read we don't want to hear about life sucking too much for any one particular person. We want excitement. We want an escape from reality. We want to go somewhere we've never been before. We want so much. But do we get everything we want in life? Hell no. That one person you love may hurt you over and over again, and you let them because you'd rather hurt than not feel them at all. You push mountains for them and even though those mountains never budge, you feel stronger for awhile and then you crumble. But alas you get up again and try climbing the mountain, only to fall. You get bruises. You get screwed over a lot by life and love especially. You don't always get what you want. You'll be rejected more times than you're accepted. But you'll charish the acceptances. You'll savour the good times. You'll be okay.

So hopefully an agent will read my manuscript and say, "Finally! A novel that doesn't glamourize teenage love but shows the flings and arrows of life in its lowest moments." Life isn't a movie. Life is harder. Which is probably why this novel is so hard to edit.

Speed is my enemy with this novel. I've had to be patient. I've had to take weeks off from even opening the file to do the necessary revisions. But I've done them. I am happy with them.

And now what? Do I query right away?

No. I'm going to take another little vacation, do another round of edits, let some co-workers read the manuscript, and maybe then I'll query. That will prove my endurance--my stamina to be patient. And in the meantime I can work on something else.

I don't want to start on a new novel. I have so many novels that beg for edits, beg to be finished, beg to be noticed, so I'll give them the attention they deserve.

On a side note, sometimes people who never say anything, say a lot.