Last night I managed to finish the rough draft of the novel I’ve been working on and sharing excerpts of on this blog. This post is dedicated to discussing where I go from here project wise and what the blog will look like now that I’m out of the pouring out pages of new material most nights.
For myself, this means editing. I write quickly and “from the gut” so while a lot of the story and character is there, there’s a lot to be mined out of careful and calculated editing and word craft. So there’s be lots of editing. I don’t consider myself a very good editor so my methodology is: do a first pass cleanup, share with friends for their feedback and copy edits, then do a second pass to incorporate feedback and another round of proofing, then do a final third pass to polish to final state.
While I’m doing this, and once the early sections of the book are in good enough shape, I’ll also begin “shopping” the book around. It’s that beautiful and enlivening process of sending it around the publishers and agents and collecting rejection letters. This whole process takes, give or take, three months or so.
Optional Irony will continue, for now, in much the same way as before. I’ll continue sharing snippets from the book as I go through it with my red pen, and will continue sharing posts and thoughts on my editing/shopping process in these “On Writing” posts as well.
Further down the line though, regardless of what happens with Five Talents (whether it gets picked up or I self-publish), I’ll move onto my next novel. I’ll probably make my next post in the On Writing series a pros and cons monologue about the two front runners and how I’ll choose what I do next. When I do start drafting the next one come spring, expect that novel to have its own snippets shared and it’s own section in the above menu.
For now, NaNoWriMo is at its end, and I unintentionally wrote an entire novel over the course of it. Time to use December to edit it into shape.
optionalirony.com 