I feel a bit like I haven’t taken a full breath out for weeks now.
If you don’t know I am currently in querying limbo and while I have received some rejections there are still a handful that I am waiting on which means that they are just chilling on my tracker page. The worst part is that my dream agent is still marked as ‘outstanding response’ so that just makes the waiting all the worse.
Add to that the fact that even though the spark of hope is still there I am also looking forward and thinking about different routes to publication so now I’m trying to figure that one out which leads to more waiting and more uncertainty and leaves more room for near crippling self-doubt.
Which I am trying to ignore and push through.
And I am doing that by writing another book. I’ve talked about it a fair amount over the last couple of months because it has basically consumed me. I have lamented being in the trenches of the murky middle:
I set myself what felt like an impossible task of writing a first draft in three months. I wasn’t really all that fussed if I achieved that because well…life happens but the project is set in a certain season and I thought that it might be easier if I just wrote it while everything was covered in tinsel and I was mainlining mince pies.
I didn’t think it was possible because it took me like a year to write Thing 2 so trying to do it in three months just made no sense. I set up a project plan that eliminated word counts on weekends and broke it all down by how many I needed by day. Some days I ‘had’ to write more than others. If I missed I day the word counts adjusted themselves. Seeing it all broken down like that made it all feel a lot less scary. It made the bites easy to swallow. It made everything actually possible.
And you know what, even though it sounded mad and I had to rewrite my entire third act in the last week of the year, I did manage to complete the first draft.
So now I am in the fun zone.
The fun zone being the process of getting a first draft into a second draft. It involves printing the whole thing and holding it in my hands. Seeing the words in print and really being able to see them properly and understand the flow of it better. As I do it single sided I also get a blank page for every printed page to deal with the new words that I am creating as I rip the thing to shreds.
I have always been a better editor than writer. I am very good at overwriting and then paring it right back to the bare minimum. Although I honed that crafted via essay writing it still applies to creative writing. And I love it.
I am roughly a quarter into this edit and it’s proving enlightening.
Firstly, I really love this story and I find these characters so fun and I love writing them (useful because I am in this now). Secondly, the amount of resistance I have found when it comes to cutting or rewriting at first was wild and unexpected, I didn’t expect to feel so precious over things this time around but it took me a couple of chapters to really get into the flow of things. Thirdly, I have actual tangible proof with this first draft that I am a better writer than I was the first time I finished a first draft.
Don’t get me wrong, this first draft isn’t a masterpiece. I cut and rewrote an entire chapter this week. I am walking into some chapters with a low level amount of fear because I know they are not great. Not gonna lie, I am a little apprehensive about getting into the third act because even though I rewrote it, I still don’t know if I like what I rewrote it into.
But, there are more sentences and paragraphs in this draft that I like dare I even say that I love them.
I am having more fun with this than I did the first time. Despite the first couple of chapters being a bit sticky I am actually finding there to be less resistance with editing this thing. I am loving uncovering more about these characters and I am loving drilling down into them and making them more. I am loving knowing that I am not going to hit a gap in the bridge that I have to somehow patch together because the bridge has been made from point A to point B and I just have to make it stronger.
I am trying desperately to focus on the joy of it all. The things that I control, which is the writing. It’s the creating. It’s the weaving of words to make something better. It’s working towards an end goal that I can currently control. Because once I’ve got this draft typed back up will most likely no longer be mine and that takes me back to scary territory.
And the crippling self doubt and the cycle starts again. Until I find something else to focus on…
Jumpin’ Jumpin’
What I’m reading - I have read a truly wild number of books in the last couple of weeks. Next of Kin - Hannah Bonam-Young (Out Feb 6th), Savage Rivals - Becca Steele, Rent: Paid in Full - Jesse H. Reign, An Education in Malice - S.T Gibson (out Feb 15th), Raiders of the Lost Heart - Jo Segura, Insatiable Park Avenue Prince - Brooke Blaine & Ella Frank, For You, Sir - Emily Brandish, Trade Deadline - Jodi Oliver.
As for the books I am currently reading; The Which Way Tree - Elizabeth Crook (out Feb 15th), The Perfect Fit - Saide Kincaid and Girl With Razor Hearts - Suzanne Young.
(All Bookshop links are affiliate links).
What I’m watching - Given how much I have read it will probably not surprise you that I am not really watching anything in a way that is demanding my undivided attention. We have just started watching The Traitors Australia to fill the void now that the UK Traitors has ended (and yes I was happy with that ending).
Title Inspiration - I pulled this one out of nowhere because the title just did not want to reveal itself to me at any point in the writing of this which is always fun. In fact, this whole newsletter was hard to pull out of my brain. Anyway, song is She Loves Control - Camila Cabello