NaNoWriMo 2014

Seven years ago, I joined and "won" NaNoWriMo with what eventually (like 5 years after that one month) my novel A Call of Moonhart. That time, I knew I had a novel-length idea, I had the world building in hand, and the timing was right to get a jump start on all of it. Eventually, that 50k words formed the basis of two novels (one still more-or-less in draft form) totally nearly 250k words. NaNo was a good way to get all that started.

This time around, I'm in a totally different place. I have two, no THREE totally different projects that I'm thinking about at the same time. One of them, which seems the most commercial, is going to take a whole lot of research that I've only just begun. An entire time and place that I'm only passing familiar with. Don't get me wrong, the research is half of what I like about my writing. Maybe even two thirds. But the story idea is strong for that and I'm excited about the project.

I'm not writing on that for NaNoWriMo this year.

Another project, taking least as much research as the first but with extra added world building required, is a really powerful concept. I LOOOOOVVVVVEEEE the concept, and it includes an expansion of one of the worlds I first began writing in about 20 years ago. But I have a concept, not a story (although I may finally have an inkling of one now) and it takes a story before I can write. Even me, a "pantser" by NaNo terminology. If there isn't a story, then what I have are research notes, and no one wants to read that.

I'm not writing on that for NaNoWriMo this year, either.

What I'm working on isn't even a novel. Unless I've badly underestimated how long the frame tale is, or I come up with another entirely new idea for a set piece, this is novella length at about 30,000 words. Even so, I won't know until I get there if this is even a story with a defined arc, or a series of character sketches. You see, these are some of my favorite, most familiar characters. I've been writing them, or versions of them, or their friends, or people who hung out in the same area at one point, for at least 30 years. They are comfortable old friends to hang around with. They are all too pretty, too smart, too good to hang contemporary fiction on. To borrow from Ellen Kushner, I love to write about these fine people all hanging around, drinking, and having sex. Fun to write but boring to read and it isn't commercial. In my case, my NaNo project this year is going to be some very self-indulgent crap that I'm taking the month of November to churn out. But, you see, (and I have the time lines if you're silly enough to ask for them) there's this gap where I have my male character making his way alone in the world, nursing a hurt from ten years before when his best friend/sometime lover left without a word. I have a later period where he is reunited with this woman, but not as lovers, for he is with a third woman. What I don't have is: what happened in those ten years? How did they reunite? Just how awkward was it when the love-of-his-youth comes back into his life just as he's beginning a very adult relationship with an amazing woman? What happened to make them all friends? More than friends?

I have been doing very little writing while I shopped for an agent for my last novel. At the end of that period, I have no agent and no new writing. Pulling out these old, friendly, comfortable, well-loved characters is a great place to find my writing flow again. I wrote an extended character study in early October, but now I want to know what happened in those ten years, and how it all resolves.

I won't "win" NaNoWriMo this time around, but that's not my goal. I want to write. I want to answer these questions. And I want to try out a new set of writing tools. Instead of OneNote and WordPerfect and a laptop and desktop, I'm now using Evernote, and Scrivener, and a tablet and the desktop. Getting to know Scrivener and developing a new toolset seems like it would be a "win" to me.

Making it up as we go along

I caught an episode of "Bones" the other day, "The Daredevil in the Mold" from Season 6. One of the sub-plots is that Booth asks his girlfriend Hannah to marry him. That's pretty much the only scene I saw that day, so there may be some issues surrounding the proposal I've forgotten. But by the end of that episode, I was shaking my head. This was bad drama and lazy writing. Even worse, it shows a limited grasp of relationship possibilities. First, the setup:

• Booth unilaterally decides to ask Hannah to marry him
• DESPITE the fact that Hannah had told him she wasn't the marrying kind
• DESPITE the fact she'd told him this repeatedly
• DESPITE the fact that her job took her away often (iirc)

• Hannah says no

• Booth, shocked, shocked I tell you! that despite all of her earlier declarative statements regarding not wanting to get married that she does note want to get married. Being all butthurt, the mopey Booth ends the relationship and kicks her out of the apartment

Lazy writing. I'm guessing that, as fun as the Hannah character was, the writers needed to get rid of her in order to make room for Bones and Booth to get together in the next season to give an explanation to Emily Deschanel's real-life pregnancy. I'll give them this: they kept Booth's actions consistent with his long-demonstrated reactionary approach to relationships as well as his less-than-stellar record of actually paying attention to the women in his life. Sure, it served the dramatic purpose of breaking them up, but BORING.

But what fascinated me most (having almost zero investment anymore in "Bones") was how easy it was to use the "relationship escalator" as a convenient (and lazy, don't forget lazy) shorthand to create a dramatic break between characters. The audience all knows the escalator and most even sympathize with Booth for attempting to "take it to the next level" and being shot down by the woman who just doesn't understand how wonderful a life filled with Booth ignoring their explicit statements detailing their wishes would be.

Unfortunately, the writers reward Booth for his simplistic and immature behavior towards Hannah and "give" him Brennan to create the family he wants (regardless of the fact that it wasn't anything that Brennan wanted. What women want isn't held very highly by the writers/producers of "Bones.") He fails "upward" in his attempts to stay on the relationship escalator. Boring. Lazy. Safe.

Especially galling is the fact that so very few relationships fall into the standard narrative anymore. And we all know this! Not everyone gets married. Hell, a bare majority of adults are married in the US. Not all families are made up of one each, male and female. There are unmarried people with families and remarried people with families, chock full of step- and half- siblings and parents and guardians. Most states still don't allow gay people to get married and not all gay people would marry if they could. The escalator no longer describes most of us, and yet most of us seem happy to let that model be our definition, even if it means feeling like a failure for not being in a relationship that matches that model.

In my writing, I try to depict different relationship models and structures. It isn't that I think no one should be a couple made up of male-bodied and female-bodied people. Far from it. What I want to show is that the effort people put in to deliberate relationships will make it more likely that everyone involved has a good shot at long term happiness. Why? Because the effort expended is most often about what will improve the odds at happiness. They don't simply assume that riding the escalator all the way to the top will result in happiness. Instead, they question their own needs and desires, they interrogate the needs and desires of the people in the relationship with him, and together, everyone involved seek the path that will maximize the happiness of all those involved.

This is not to say that Booth would be good at any other relationship structure. For one thing, his identity is based on doing the "right" thing without ever actually questioning what that means. He constantly gets rewarded for being unimaginative, anti-intellectual, and unevolved.  I'm not saying all successful polyamorists are highly evolved individuals, but few successful polyamorists are as unevolved as Seeley Booth is. I'm sure the writers will make sure that Booth is happy with Brennan. But that's only because the writers are fine with so completely rewriting Brennan's character as to make her fit with Booth. It's her show, but his narrative, and that's not only boring. It's annoying.

Let's Get the Band Back Together

Tuesday night, Smokey Wizard Bacon got “the band back together.” Not sure if it was for one last heist or not, but we had a good time. Kat Beyer was with us and she brought the two things she came out with this summer: her baby and her book The Demon Catchers of Milan. We talked for a bit about the trials and tribulations she went through getting both moved into production.

I enjoy my writing group and find them to  be a great group of people. We now have one book in print, two of us commencing an agent search, another one close to finishing a second novel-length project, and others working on various short story projects. I’ve tried to think back to when the group began and honestly can’t anymore. I remember it began at WisCon, I remember bringing it up in a “living room” with Delia Sherman and Ellen Kushner and having a few people talk to me immediately after the discussion and us forming a group. We’ve met monthly since. IDK, a decade now?

Kat managed what I’m just now trying to figure out: how to shift from creative mode to business mode. She’s offered advice and that’s been great. But now it’s on me: getting the pitch/log line (I hate both those terms) that encapsulate and elucidate my novel, create the bones for the query letter, and a draft a synopsis (it’s down to five pages. You can’t ask for more of me!). Now it is down to divining who, out of the thousands of agents working in the field today, do I send the query to so that I don’t waste my time or theirs. There’s a certain amount of analysis paralysis going on, but since it seems each agent is a Use Once then Discard kind of proposition, I don’t want to engage until I’m ready, my project is ready.

One of the things I didn't realize was that Kat knows Patrick Rothfuss, and that he lives in Madison  (I wonder if she knows him well enough to invite him to an upcoming SWB gathering?). She knows all kinds of interesting people. That is one thing that I do not do well at all: networking. Kat is a wonderful person: charming, intelligent, kind. She's made all kinds of friends at WisCon and those friends became important to her in the agent search process. I mean, good on her, but those aren't my skills. Are those like other skills, something one can learn? To add to the already- long list of skills needed?

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 ***

Wow! It is really dusty in here.


Hello? Anybody home?

Take a Hike

The action in my novel takes place in two quite different settings. One is pre-industrial agrarian and the other is managed wilderness, and these two distinct areas are separated by a mountain range that runs down the country like a spine. That had been the idea from early on, from when I read Guns, Germs, and Steel and 1491 as source material. So while the setting may have been planned, the elements within the setting had another source to them:

The need to get the hell out of my house and go for a hike.

Butt-in-chair-time is the basis for good writing. For bad writing as well. Okay, all writing starts by someone placing themselves before a keyboard or a microphone or placing pen in hand. Eventually, though, the body can only take so much. Fingers get tired, butt goes numb, the eyes start to water and the head to ache. And that’s when the writing is going well! If the plot is struggling or I have no idea how my heroine is going to get out of the latest mess I’ve thrown her into, then I need to change my environment.

I’ve long enjoyed hiking. When I was in High School I went on several backpacking trips to Colorado and Montana. The seclusion, the physical effort, and the natural beauty of those moutain trips lodged inside of me, waiting for my adult self to get back to nature. There was a lot of time between then and now spent in urban, suburban, and even exurban landscapes, but (despite a knee that one doctor told me reminded him of “crab meat”) I eventually made it back out to many of the State Parks in my area. I've hiked the Ice Age State Trail on many segments, Devil's Lake and Parfrey's Glen are among my favorite hikes, and others close by.

John Muir once wrote: “The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” For me, going on a hike when the story struggled was the clearest way into the Universe that I had created. Losing my sense of self as I hike the forest and bluffs provides me with an opportunity to engage with my story in a new way. Every time that I’d been stuck and then gone on a hike, I’d found my way back into the story and could again move it forward. I have a smartphone and I’d stop, take it out, and leave a voice note for myself or call my home phone and leave a voicemail with what I thought might be the next step. Most often I used that, although sometimes there would be three or four voice notes as I revised, expanded, or altered those ideas.

Creating fiction is a mental act (heh, yeah, I went there). The brain is the most engaged and the fingers simply provide the means by which those thoughts get rendered into something external to the self and my own imaginings. But I’ve found that physical activity is imperative if I’m to be successful at my writing. I’ve focused in this post on how hiking provides a direct benefit to my writing, but physical activity is good in and of itself. If I’m in decent enough shape, it will allow me to ignore my tired fingers and my numbing butt. I can slog through that many more words before the eyes get too tired or the headache too distracting. When I don’t need the space to resolve plotting or other issues, then I’ll take up another activity, like a long bike ride or a walk through the neighborhood. Neither of those work as well as hiking the forest for solving problems, but the activity is good for its own sake.

All photos copyright David O. Engelstad

If you write and you find that pacing the halls or staring at the monitor or that damn blank page isn’t getting it done, then might I suggest you find some physical activity that you can do, that calls for the body to move but the brain to be needed only in case of emergency, and let the activity clear the way into the Universe of your own creation.

Follow the Source(s)

I've read most of what Jacqueline Carrey has written, so I read with interest Scalzi's blog post on Carrey's Big Idea. One of the books she used to help her plan her new novel was Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and this same booked sparked a major element of my own fictional world. As her next book deals with encountering an alternate-history pre-Columbian Americas, I wondered if she used 1491 by Charles C. Mann. Then I started thinking of the other books that have influenced my fictional world and began thinking about all of the texts that have influenced the writing of my novel.

My initial attempts at beginning this story had two elements that have continued through the story: a group of actors dragged into the political conflicts of their day despite themselves, and a woman masquerading as a man playing woman's roles on stage. I had the image, but not the conflict, not the why. I kept reading. Once I read Guns,Germs, and Steel I radically changed my initial concept of the world. That book provided the economic element that gave me the cultural conflict. In the novel as it stands now, I have two cultures that share a common heritage, but one group has left the dominant agricultural culture for the life of the “Uplands” – a heavily forested ridge that runs down the center of the peninsula that forms the country – for a life of hunting and gathering. The conflicts that Jared set out between the two, particularly in his excerpt called “Agriculture: the World's Greatest Mistake,” got me thinking about how best to have a viable hunter culture exist alongside an agricultural culture, and what kind of conflicts and misunderstandings might arise.

In order to give myself a better understanding of just what a hunter/gatherer culture might look like, I turned to 1491. Or more to the point, stumbled onto it and then let out a great big A ha! That book set me straight on a number of fallacies that I'd learned during my grade school history classes about the “Indians” and what the American continents had been like before Columbus. I discovered that radically changing the landscape to make it easier to survive isn't something that's limited to agricultural societies. His descriptions of how the New England area and even the vast Amazonian expanse may have looked like in the 15th century gave me a framework for how my hunter culture would look. I loved the sophistication that such “primitive” people brought to the shaping of their environments to suit themselves. The book Biomimicryy: Innovation Inspired by Nature gave me a modern approach to doing what these ancient peoples did without science as we know it, and together they gave me ideas such as the Provider Meadows, regular burning to keep undergrowth clear in “undeveloped” lands, and making sure that certain areas would have the foods that most attracted preferred prey animals so that the hunters might not have to range so far so often in search of game. It also reinforced my concerns about our modern “monoculture” of farming which is a central aspect of the book.

I also wanted to have, as a primary cultural difference, that my Uplands culture would be matriarchal in some manner while the Lowlands culture would be embarking on a much more patriarchal path. I am, unfortunately, rather familiar with patriarchy but I wanted to have a solid idea of what a female-led or dominated culture might look like. I had begun with an unoriginal sort of Gaia idea, but I'm happy to say that it evolved. One of my favorite sources of research material has been The Teaching Company's "Great Courses" series.

Frankly, it's hard to say which of the many lectures I've listened to haven't been “research” because I listen to subjects I'm interested in and I write what I'm interested in, so there's lots of overlap. But in doing all I could to make sure that the cultures of my world were plausible, I mined the cultures of our world quite a bit. Two standout: Peoples and Cultures of the World presented by Professor Edward F. Fischer provided me many examples of how cultures have worked across time and within them I found examples of matrilineal if not matriarchal cultures, and I incorporated that information where it made sense. The other lecture is The Terror of History: Mystics, Heretics, and Witches in the Western Tradition presented by Professor Teofilo F. Ruiz, which describes the upheaval in Medieval Europe around turn of the 10th century, and the influence of the millennial movements, including the witch-hunting frenzy, as well as the role that orthodoxy plays in major religions.

Religion plays a huge role in this story, for it is a conflict between the followers of the God An and those who follow the Goddess Na as much as anything. The first half of The Evolution of God by Robert Wright assisted in my understanding of the genesis and role of religion in societies and how religions always support the dominant culture and protect it from change. Another lecture series, Lost Christianities: Christian Scriptures and the Battles over Authentication presented by Professor Bart D. Ehrman I had gotten years ago as a gift for my folks and so I can't say that I used it specifically as research for this story, still, the ideas of textuality vs oral tradition in the transmission of religion became important, as did the conflict between the concept of inspired “word of god” and the human agency that writes, reads, and utilizes those words.

Fiction works also inspired me, particularly in the concept of my Players. In My Father had a Daughter: Judith Shakespeare's Tale by Grace Tiffany  I got to read about how it would be for a woman to be an actor when women were denied that opportunity. Of course, Shakespeare in Love did that as well, but something about this novel really got me thinking about how I might use a similar situation. One series that got me thinking about the role that Players might play in my world was the A Play of... series by Margaret Frazier. And while I don't want to mislead anyone about the highbrow nature of my novel, the works of Shakespeare influenced me greatly. I have no hope to write blank verse as well as The Bard and the dramatic worlds he created I can't even hope to aspire to. But his language has always inspired me and he created many situations in which women are forced to enter the “male sphere” and they do it by changing clothes and manners. “I can use that,” I thought, which pretty much sums up all of the ideas garnered from the books mentioned above and many more besides.

Even though I'm the one writing the novel, I still find it fascinating how so many disparate elements can be combined, through me, into something new. My writing is nothing like Carrey's and yet we both employed the same book to help us create our worlds. More than once, I've gotten into arguments over such things as "authorial intent" and I realize that all we as authors have is what makes it onto the page. That's the craft part of writing. The fun part is going through all of these works and finding those bits that strike a spark. Whatever my intent is in writing, in reading I'm on a never-ending search for those things that make me think: "I can use that!"

Writing in a Time of Technology

I use a lot of tech when I write. Everything from a fountain pen on notepaper, to a notebook computer, to a desktop computer with dual monitors. Which tool(s) I use depend on where I am in the process and what I'm trying to accomplish. Using a pen or a laptop at a coffee shop is pretty self-explanatory, so I want to spend some time talking about the tools I use at home, especially during the rewrite process, which is where I'm at presently.

To create my world, I used a program called Fractal Terrains. I went through several attempts before the software gave me a world map that had on it a continent that came close enough to my idea of what I wanted for my story. The program even put in rivers and lakes. I found that working with the elements that I didn't specifically plan or design put some constraints on me that improved the writing. On my own I might have forgotten things like putting rivers in inconvenient places. It's been awhile since I used it, so I may not do an in-depth review of this program. I then used a companion program called Campaign Cartographer to make a map out of the part of the world I'm using. At some future date I may put in roads, villages, place names, etc. When I'm writing at my desk, I'll open this program to check distances between points and remind me of where those inconvenient rivers might be.

If you're reading this online then you're familiar with web browsers and some day I may review the different sites I use for reference. When I'm writing new material, the web browser is closed and when I'm rewriting or editing it's open. Closed when I'm creating because it's easier to do research (or “research”) instead of actually writing. Open when I'm rewriting or editing because it's then that I'll need to check facts or be sure of word meanings.

Shot of OneNote showing some of the sections I use.
The map was imported from Campaign Cartographer.

The best program that Microsoft didn't steal swindle buy from some-one else, is called OneNote. I use OneNote 2010 to keep track of all of my research. If I figure out how, I'll even post an empty novel writing notebook I prepared for use in OneNote. It contains the same sections I created for tracking research for my current novel: World Building (physical elements like maps and climate), Culture (religion, language, dress, history), Characters, Writing (outlines, reminders, things to do), and Business (agents, markets, tracking). I added a section for Rewrite to track the extensive differences between Draft 1 and Draft 2. For research – or more importantly, for remembering what I've researched and what I plan to do with what I've researched – OneNote is indispensable. If it's on the web, Internet Explorer has a Send to OneNote feature that captures the page and provides a link to it in the note. If you have a tablet with pen input, you can add hand written notes.

My novel has two first person narratives running in parallel and the story moves over several weeks. My nation's history goes back more than a thousand years and I have seven primary characters and several more secondary characters. Each of them have birthdays, events in their lives, places to be and times to be there. It may be that some people can keep track of all of that in their heads, but I can't. I use Microsoft Excel with several workbooks open: a country timeline, a story timeline, a character timeline, and a history of the rulers of my country. I don't actually track word count or rising and falling action as I've seen some do. I tried and found that it had limited utility for me, but that could always change.



Desktop version of Pandora



Pandora or iTunes. I need music while I write. I discovered Pandora a year or so ago and really love the way I can create different music streams depending on my mood. Instrumentals for writing. I need to have the only words around be the ones I'm putting on paper. Songs distract me too much.

When I'm not using pen and paper, I use WordPerfect for my writing. I know. The world uses Microsoft Word. Even Mac users are being sucked into using that inferior product. I'll do an extensive review with compare and contrast between Word and WordPerfect, including their underlying word processing metaphor in a later blog post. Suffice it to say, for long form documents like a novel with multiple chapters, WordPerfect is far easier to use and less prone to corrupting files.

To sum up, when I'm writing I'll have the following programs open. The closer to the top of the list, the more likely it is that the program will be running it comes time to write:

• WordPerfect
• Pandora or iTunes
• OneNote
• Excel
• Campaign Cartographer
• FireFox

Let me get back to that fountain pen. Despite all of the tech – because? – the fountain pen plays a very important role for me. The story always ends up in electronic format, but sometimes I can't create on the computer. The typing, the compilation of words on screen sometimes becomes an impediment to the writing instead of an aid to it. If I'm creating poetry or lyrics I can't do it on screen. If I'm working on a difficult section where I know there are going to be a lot of starts and stops, then I'll go back to paper and ink for the creation. It's easier for me to draw a line through a written section and start anew than it is for me to select and delete. Not sure why. Delete it and it's gone and there might be something in that false start that helps point me to the true start. On paper I can cross it out but the words are still there to be mined for the next attempt. When I edit, at some point, I have to go through it pen to paper at some point. I can do some work on the screen, but the close work is always with a pen on paper. Not even an "ink-enabled" tablet changed that.

Besides, if I'm feeling uncertain, an afternoon spent pen in hand resulting in ink-stained fingers is a great way to connect with the process of writing.

Practical Tips for Writers

Stef sent me this link, knowing that I'm in the last stages of the intermediate phase of my novel (no, that really doesn't make sense to me either). It's an interesting read. Despite the fact it's mostly nonfiction writers giving advice to another nonfiction writer, much of it will be useful no matter what's being written.

I love the fact that the advice is often contradictory. Read everything. Read nothing but what will help your book. Write everyday. Don't write everyday, sometimes you need a break.

This just confirms something I've actually already learned: There is no One True Way. I've heard that advice at WisCon panels and seen it played out in posts like the one linked above. What works for one author won't work for the next. What works for one book might not work for the next! There are too many variables in play, not the least of which is the author.

I don't write everyday. I'm at work most days of the week and often have other obligations in the evenings. But most weekends I'll spend my mornings writing and my afternoons researching or editing what I wrote the day before. Many times I'll forge ahead and get a number of pages written, and then spend a few precious after work hours going over them, getting them beaten into true before the next weekend and the next writing sessions.

If I'd been asked to write the three things I've learned, they would go something like this:

1. There is no One True Way to write a book. Allow the current project to find its own level. But once that happens, exploit that knowledge for all its worth. With the next project you may have to search for a new approach.
1. Cherish whatever approach you've found, because if life gets in the way and disrupts the approach, the routine you've established, it can be a lovely slice of hell trying to re-establish or find that new approach for the current project
2. It's easier to read than to write. It's easier to plan or worldbuild than to write. It's easier to surf the internet than to write. Hell, it's easier to do damn near anything other than writing. But reading a novel written by someone else is nowhere near as fulfilling as writing your own. At some point, you'll have to stop researching (or “researching”), stop planning, stop surfing, put the butt in chair, and put those sentences down.
3. Don't track the hours you spend creating the novel. Really. Just don't. It leads to foolish things like figuring out you hourly earnings, and then where will you be?

In a different post I'll discuss the tech I use in my writing, but I found the references to Scrivener and other tech tools interesting. Another case of “what works for one...”

What does "done" look like?

I finished the rewrite of my novel in time for WisCon 35. Go me! Except, there’s a scene missing, I need a stronger opening, and the novel is at least 25,000 words too long. Two members of my writing group still haven’t given me comments for the first 80 pages and I just handed it to one other person to read the entire novel and offer suggestions. But I’m done. Finished. On to the agent search!

Except that I’m not. Not finished. Not done. Not ready to hand out the first fifty pages to anyone. I’m not ready to send anything out until I finish going through the latest comments from my writing group on those first fifty and making the changes that I feel need to be made.

My novel is also too long. Pretty much every thing I’ve read and everyone who I’ve talked to tells me that it’s too long. The most generous estimate is that I have to cut 25,000 words to be ready to seek an agent. Others tell me 50,000. Still others tell me that it takes as long to tell a story as it takes, and if an agent sees promise in the first fifty, then she’ll help with identifying where the chaff is that needs cutting. I want to believe that last one, so it’s probably not true.

So I’m done, except that I’m not, and won’t be for a couple of months yet. I’ll work on the opening scenes this weekend. I’ll go over the latest suggestions from the writing group next week and tackle those edits next weekend. After that I’ll hit that one scene (I’ve been putting it off this long, what’s another couple weeks?).

Writing continues on the project that’s done and I’m no longer sure I’ll recognize actually being done when it gets here. I know this isn’t it, but what about after I revamp the opening and complete that one scene? If it’s still clocking in at around 150,000 words, will I consider it done and send it out? Will I struggle for those last 25,000 and then call it done (I cut the original project in half and the rewrite still got me to this length. Will I ever be able to cut that much?)? Even if it finds an agent at 150,000, there will be more changes then and more again should I be lucky enough to get the book sold.

Maybe “done” isn’t the right word. Maybe “ready” is the word I’m looking for. Not completed, because it seems to me that novel writing is a process, with lots of options and opportunities and choices to make along the way. But maybe I need to shoot for “ready” and see where that takes me.

It’s not ready yet. I’ve completed a rewrite and now I’m working on some additional changes. Then I think it’ll be ready for the next step in the process. I’ll have to be happy with “ready” because no story of mine is ever done.