Now that I've sent of the first queries for my main WIP, I've been going back to other projects, namely one where I'm hoping to finish a first complete draft soon. In fact, I am pretty much at the finale of that project. The problem is, of course, that I'm stuck. Throughout the whole writing process of this book, though I've had problems organizing the novel, I've never had writer's block. I've always had a pile of ideas - almost more than actually fit the story. But here I am, with no idea how I'm supposed to top it all off in the finale. My two main characters have faced off against the government and against an evil organization, but now they're up against an alien with supernatural powers (oops, maybe I should have added a spoiler alert, haha). When I think of what I could do for the finale, my mind comes up blank. No ideas, nothing. It's quite frustrating, actually. To fight the writer's block, I'm planning to write the background story of the main antagonist so I can figure out a way for my characters to fight her in a grand and also satisfying way. At the same time, I won't want any deus ex machina situation, so I'll have to be careful about how I proceed. In other news: I participated in Sffpit again!Once again, I participated in the twitter pitching event, and almost forgot about it again, too! This time it was a bit complicated since I was basically unable to access twitter throughout the whole event. Meaning I had to schedule all the tweets and didn't have the occasion to really interact or engage with other writers. Still, this time I also got a like! An actual like from an agent! However, upon looking up the literary agency, I'm hesitating on whether I should send them a query. Though the website looks nice, there's no information on the books that they've helped publish. Maybe I'll send a query at some point, but for now, I'm sticking with my list of 100 agents I've prepared in advance (or should I rather say, 95 agents, since I've sent out a first batch! ^^). Speaking of which, I should be sending out my next batch soon, but for now I'm taking a tiny break from my main WIP to give it some air. I'll see you next week then, with more news on it! I might also add a page on this website specifically for my main WIP (mood boards; playlists; memes; etc). See you then!
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I've sent out my first query letters!!! I'm not going to lie. Though it feels scary having my novel out there in the big bad world, it feels somewhat relieving to have finally made that step. I'm not 100% happy with everything, but I'll never be, so it was now or never. Long story short, yesterday, I sent out 5 queries to different agents that I more or less wanted to work with. I'm testing the waters with them, so to say, as the agents I really really want to work with are still on the bench for now. I have to admit, though, that I sometimes get these weird flashbacks and sudden thoughts, like what if I forgot to attach the pdfs? Or what if I attached the wrong one? Or what if I have a typo on the third page? Or what if my manuscript formatting isn't correct after all? Or what if I mixed up agents' requirements? Either way, I'm going to upload a video over on youtube all about my process since I filmed myself sending off the queries in real time! It's a fun ride to be sure. What now? Even though I'd love to think I'm done with DREAMING now, I'm not, not really. Even if I've sent off the first few chapters there are minor edits I still need to make further into the book, but nothing that would take too much time (if I suddenly got an email requesting the full manuscript for example). And the synopsis might need a whole do-over. While prepping the emails, I even had an idea for a spinoff novel in the same universe. Where I take a closer look at a character that I'd love to explore more. The novel would run parallel to the original novel - but it's only an idea for now, I've written a good 0 words for it as of now. But needless to say I've been very inspired lately, which I think is because I've been watching The Sandman! In other news, tomorrow there's also the SFFpit coming up on twitter, which I almost completely forgot. Yay! I'm probably going to schedule all of my tweets since I won't be available to tweet them live. I don't expect to get any likes from agents. But if I do, that's great, the more the merrier, right? Haha. In any case, for now, I need to go back to my boys, aka, my dystopian romance set in an apocalyptic future. It's one of those novels where I think about writing for it all the time but at the end of the day, write nothing at all. Yay! But I have a good feeling about all this and look forward to writing even more! See you next time! Just like my main character at some point goes through endless cycles of torture, I go through endless cycles of revisions - with no end in sight, in fact!
When I read through my novel for my first *final* read-through, I was quite positive that I had taken note of most of the issues, and after the revisions that followed, I was sure that the last edits would be extremely minor, like adding a word here and deleting another one there. But boy oh boy was I wrong. I had hardly started rereading my first chapter when the edits starting piling up like mad. It's crazy that after all this time there are still such major changes happening. This of course leads us to the question: will I ever be done? Where does this end? Will I read and reread my chapters hundreds of times and still change things on the hundredth reread? And what happens when I'm agented and more edits need to happen? It feels like a endless, neverending cycle. In any case, I have gone over my whole manuscript once again, this time going through the document and applying changes as I'd go. The hope now is that once I reread it once more, I will have much less to modify. Best case scenario, I'd have nothing to modify, but we all know that's near to impossible. I hope to have the rereading done by the end of the week, as well as my preparations for querying. Meaning that, once again, I am pushing back my deadline for querying. My current deadline was today, but now I am moving it back to Monday 22nd. Fingers crossed, and I'll see you next week. What a week. I finished what I had intended - I revised the novel from start to finish: I transferred my manuscript onto kindle and read through it. As I did, I took note of any problems or inconsistencies. Then I went back and modified my document based on those notes. Now there's good and bad news about the progress so far. Good news is that most of the novel is pretty solid, and I'm happy with it: most of my comments were related with sentence structure and (EVEN STILL NOW) spelling mistakes. Bad news is that I was unhappy with two scenes towards the end of the novel which are going to see some bigger changes. So, I'm going to have to do that before sending off the queries... Organizing the Book's chronology After revising, I decided to print a calendar to organize the book's chronology, because why not? As the story follows a senior student, events such as school breaks, holidays, and exam periods are my anchors to help coordinate all the action. However, when completing this calendar, I visually saw where there were time gaps and where the reader may be confused about when the action is happening in the story. As such, I completed the calendar in a way that felt right, and will now re-read the newest version of the book on kindle (yet again) and see how I can make the time markers clearer - but those should be minor edits only (I hope). To meet or not to meet deadlines I am nearing my own deadline to send off queries (I wanted to send the first batch off this Monday! Oh my goodness!), and as you can tell from what I've written so far, it's starting to seem pretty tight. Still, I managed some progress on the front of queries this week. Over the last seven days, I have critiqued multiple query letters of other authors, and, in return, received critiques on mine. Most of those critiques were super helpful, and some not so much, but all in all I feel that my query reads much much better now. I've really been able to ameliorate it thanks to other writers' help! Still, I am not quite confident in making the deadline. While I feel that this past week was somewhat productive, I have had to work with a headache for seven days now which was just great. I also have job applications I want to send off next week, so that's also something to take into account. Plus all the editing that still needs to be done... I'm getting vertigo just thinking about it. Another thing that happened this week was the Jericho Writers pitch event on twitter, which I didn't know was happening until I received a notification that one of the agents I most want to send my query to, was the host of the pitch event. That I freaked out was an understatement. In something like half an hour, I had scrambled together a pitch tweet based on my previous twitter pitches. Sadly, I didn't get a reply or like from said agent, but either way, I am going to query her no questions asked once she reopens to submissions! So that's the progress so far. Solid progress, but still a lot of work to do. That being said, I'm not moving my deadline back a year like I did before, haha (that's nervous laughter). I might have to move it just a couple of days or so just to get right which agents from my list I'm going to query first. Then I have to check that their MSWL hasn't changed too much since I checked them out last (year). Then it's off to writing those emails! Ahh! See you next week! |