Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Guinevere is Sleeping and I am Going Crazy

Arwen pretending to be Guinevere
A writer friend of mine recommended that after spending two intense years of writing Guinevere's story, I should give myself some distance--at least a month. That way I could go back my story with fresh eyes and hack at its length with a battle ax.

But after so long I don't know what to do without Guinevere. It sounds pathetic, I know, but...I miss her. *the sound of violins swells in the background*

So here's how I've been biding my time...

  • balancing my checkbook (um...hadn't done that in 1 1/2 years)
  • potty training my three-year-old daughter (no liquid gold in the froggy potty yet)
  • going on actual dates with my husband...what a novelty!
  • reading three books on writing and revising (my favorite so far is The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile by Noah Lukeman)
  • buying three more writing books
  • entering a bunch of Online contests for pitches and the first 150 of my MS
  • registering for a writers' conference
  • committing to attending a writers' retreat with my friends in March
  • watching a lot of TV and movies (Fringe is back on. Woot, woot!)
  • working for the Utah Hemophilia Foundation (well, I do that anyway, but I didn't want my bread and butter--and fabulous friends there--to think I'd forgotten them)
  • reading many author and agent blogs
  • beta reading a novel for my crit partner (Robin, you go, girl!)
  • critiquing three chapters for my other crit partners
  • scariest of all (balancing my checkbook was scary) finally emailing my crit partners my MS yesterday. I've been going back and forth with whether or not I should let them read it at this point, knowing it needs so much cutting. But I braved up and decided in a sheer moment of GENIUS, they could help me with that!
So here I am twiddling my thumbs, reading another revision book, and waiting another few days for my sleeping beauty to wake up.

My battle ax and I will be ready...I think.

3 comments:

  1. Aww, good luck! It's hard to wait it out, but I think it pays off to be able to see things clearly. For The Breakaway, coming out in May, I literally had to let that book sit for about 8 years before I was ready to pick up that thing and see its flaws. It was my first book and I wrote it while I was a teenager, so yeah, it needed a long sit. I was working on other stuff, of course. College, mostly. :)

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  2. Yay for sleeping MS! I'm impressed with all you're doing with your spare time. What is balancing a checkbook? I'm reading your MS between writing and mommying. Don't freak out...you are a good writer.

    Also, you watch Fringe? You should totally be able to help me with my Sci Fi stuff then... You tricked me into thinking you knew nothing about Sci Fi. Ha. I'm on to you now!

    Keep twiddling. It's good for you. You'll go back to Guenevere with an open mind and know just where to cut.

    That's the theory anyway.

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  3. I've done the same thing, and it's killer! I sent my MS to beta readers in November and haven't even looked at it since then... I'm itching to get back for one last revision, which is so ironic because it was causing such agony before! Absence, heart, fonder. All that.

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