A few days before the end of October, I finally finished the book whose working-title was "Under the Sign of the Raven", which was completely relevant to the book but somehow unsatisfying. I did quite a bit of editing, and tucked it away so that I could scrub my characters out of my mind. After a year constantly in their company, I needed a break.
The first of November came along, and on a whim I decided to work on another idea I had for NaNoWriMo. By the end of November, I had over 70,000 words. From there it was a straight-sprint to the finish-line, and over the last several days I've been editing rather than writing new material. Over a year to write one book, under six weeks to write the next. And I have three more novel-length ideas in my head, jumping up and down and waving their arms and screaming, trying to get my attention. Okay, possibly four, but I'm trying not to listen to that one.
I went back to "Under the Sign", and suddenly it was patently obvious it should be called "The Raven's Nest", which also works well for the structure of the book. I read it over again, glad to have a bit of a distance. It reads really, really well - better than many books I've paid money for. My chosen beta-reader is a young bookseller in Perth, and I've sent it to her. She is both my honorary second daughter and my birthday-sister, and has known me since she was eight. In all that time, she hasn't read a word I've written, which is handy, because she can come at me fresh, like an unknown author.
Having sent that to her, it was time to edit the other manuscript. I discarded its working-title, and now I'm groping about for a new one. I'm also groping about for a literary agent, because the whole idea of hunting publishers seems exhausting to me: someone who covers quite a lot of literary genres, and verse, and memoire/biography, because ... I ... Have ... Plans. I think I've found one. Let's hope she thinks she's found me!
No comments:
Post a Comment