That Time of Year

Maybe it’s the time of year. Labor day has come and gone, Autumn is near, and I’m getting geared back up to get to work. I always liked school – even high school, but particularly college – so perhaps at this time of year the old habits kick in and I’m more open to the rigorous work of writing and reading.

Sure. That works. We’ll go with that.

Not that I’ve been uninvolved since the last real update to this blog. At the Weekend with the Novel, I got great feedback on how to proceed. I dove into the polishing process of the manuscript and began to build up the sales documents for the novel: query, pitch, synopsis, etc. In April I went to the UW Writers’ Institute and had the opportunity to pitch my novel to Laurie McLean. In early May I went to Amsterdam on a working vacation, and in late May I attended WisCon.

Then, I got distracted. I waited to hear back from Laurie and when I got her very polite rejection I didn’t jump back in to the fray. Other things to do, don’t you know. Like biking. And dealing with record-breaking heat. And I’m sure there were lots of other things. Must have been.

But that “working vacation” I mentioned needs to be paid for, or at least justified. I’ve spent over 5 years on a novel, I’d like to see if it will sell. I’m feeling the very powerful itch to be writing again. I need to get back to the business of being a writer, and that (unfortunately) involves the writing business.

Part of that process is going to be this space. Not only writing about the process but also just getting back into writing. The earliest writing on this blog kept to a strictly limited scope: about writing, my writing, and that process. <<Yawn>> I’m sorry, I nodded off for a minute. I’m interested in a lot more than writing, so I need to write about a lot more than writing.

So, I’m going to write about the things that interest me. You’ve been warned.

*** edited to add tags, fix typos ***