October 22, 2006
Day Jobs
Well, I’m officially looking for a day job. With DS at school full time, DH and I feel it’s time. While I’m not looking forward to juggling the writing around full time work, I am looking forward to money. And being around real, live people again.
Still, there’s a sad part of me that feels a little like I’m giving up. I know intellectually that this is ridiculous. I’m not giving up writing, I couldn’t if I wanted to. And hell, I wrote the last half of Living Lies on a commuter train going to and from work right after DS was born. I suppose when I first left the corporate world to stay home with DS, it was with the very romanticized image of me writing one best seller after another while my toddler played happily next to my desk and long line of agents and editors pounded on my front door. But reality is always very different. Still, I’d hoped to be further along the road to publication than I am.
Okay, enough sulking. There is a lot of pluses to working and writing. Now, I’ll have a bigger budget to enter contests. And I can buy a new printer!!!! And it’s not like I didn’t accomplish anything in the past five years. I got up the nerve to join a crit group and learned the art of rewriting. (And to me, rewriting is more challenging than a first draft. A blog for another day.) I’ve written four full novels. (Okay one was crap and will never see the light of day, but again all a learning experience. :-)) And I feel that I have a much better understanding about market. As the song says, it’s a long and winding road.
I sent a full of Witch to that agent. Now begins the waiting. I’m loving my paranormal right now. I’m hesitant to say so for fear of jinxing myself. Always a good sign when you can hardly wait to get back to work on it, though. I’m also reading through Blood and Bone. Man there’s a lot of work there. The whole thing feels rushed, and I can not tell you how many scenes I have where nothing really happens. I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote some of that.
It’s interesting to me, though, that I had the exact opposite problem with Witch. I went into great detail with everything in that book and it ended at more than 550 pages. I cut 150 with little effort, shows you how much was crap, the stuff I did keep was pretty easy to rework because I had so much material left. With B&B I’m going to have to go through and make more happen otherwise it’s going to be a pretty dull book. On the upside, the sexual tension is great. At least I have that to work with.
And since I’ve been reviewing scenes for this story, please allow me to impart a little wisdom that I’ve gathered. Get rid of anything that takes place in a car. Unless something huge is happening (alien attack, explosion, body being dropped off an over pass–you get the idea), I assure you the scene is going to suck ass and be boring as all get out. Particularly, if it’s one person driving and thinking, or two people driving–not at the same time of course–discussing something that happened in the previous chapter and sharing lame looks at each other.
Wow, this has been a long one. I’ll post more often in future.
Music: The Killers–Bones
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YOu’ve come a long way baybee. I can see it in your writing and in your determination. You’ll get to your final goal even with a few obstacles. Let’s continue to be there for each other. This is such a stinky business. We need to be each other’s air fresheners.
LOL!
katherine
October 22nd, 2006 at 7:39 pmhttp://www.ballroomdancenovels.com