Hello Again World!
I have been a bad, bad blogger. I could give you a whole bunch of excuses, but really what it came down to is that I didn't want to write blog posts. Things have settled down a bit now, and several people have asked what's going on, so I'm back to blogging and I'll try really hard not to leave you hanging again.
The Update:
Over the holidays, things got a little bit crazy. I didn't have much time to write, but I did manage to create the preliminary ending to the novel. I say "preliminary", because I'm not completely satisfied with the end, but it was good enough to let me go back and start the rewrites. Which I did.
Over the last several weeks, I have been focusing hard on rewriting and polishing the "shitty first draft" that I threw down on the page. For those of you who aren't writers, there's a common piece of advice that says you shouldn't worry about whether your first draft is any good. That's what revisions are for. Instead, you put your ideas down on the page and keep moving as fast as possible. In my case, that wasn't very fast, but hey, working for a major accounting firm limits your free-time a bit!
So I'm now revising, editing, polishing and even getting a few reviews from people. Overall, reactions have been good! I think I've got a good start, and with some more time and a lot more work, I might actually have something publishable. In fact, I had a wonderful opportunity to have my first three pages critiqued by Sara Megibow, an agent with the Nelson Literary Agency, and one of my top picks for potential representation. She gave me some great feedback, which I will be incorporating into all of my edits as I continue forward.
I've set a goal for myself that I will have a finished draft, ready to send to agents, by the end of March. That's two months from today, for those of you counting. Which means that I'm going to become a social recluse over the next two months. So if I don't post as frequently, don't go out as much, avoid your calls and emails...well, I guess you'll know why!
