All's Quiet on the Western Front

It's been a painfully slow last couple of weeks. My day job's been challenging to say the least and its spilled over into my writing time, sapping any leftover energy I have left. The new normal will kick in next week and hopefully I can get myself into the right frame of mind by then.

My manuscript goes to Chimera editing this week. I think I've got my novel to where I want it and will hopefully have lots of good feedback to rewrite and revise it and start the agent submission process again.

In the meantime, I want to keep going as I feel like I've fallen out of the daily writing routine, especially when all I've been doing for that last six months or so has been revising Spirit Quest. I have some notes of the sequel, but I'm also thinking it might be good to change my mind for a couple of weeks until I get the Chimera edit back. I've been trying to do that for a couple of weeks now, but I'm not sure what's holding me back. Perhaps the need to keep fiddling with Spirit Quest? Perhaps the daunting aspect of taking on something new? Perhaps both?


Onwards and upwards!

Kicking off my 2nd editing/revision pass

Completing my second draft felt really good. I know the back end is weaker and that I'll have to spend a bit more time on it. My goal is to have the 391 page manuscript polished off by the end of the year. So, with roughly 111 days left in the year, I'm going to have to fix about 3.5 pages per day to reach that goal. Ouch. But, there are parts of the book that I feel really good about and those won't need as much work.

I've also received my editing summary for the first 100 pages and there's a lot to digest. Lots of ideas and focal points that need to be sharpened and decisions that need to be made. 

In addition to that edit, I think that I need to do my own read through of the manuscript and jot down notes as to what needs to be fixed/upgraded.

As for the hunt for an agent, I'm putting that on hold for a few months. The revise and resubmit isn't due until the end of the year, so I'm going to focus on cleaning up the manuscript as much as I can until say November and continue going while I send out my agent submissions. Assuming a few months turnaround, I'll have it all in good shape for when they ask for the complete manuscript.

Back to the edit recovery!