A Long, Slow Process

I haven’t blogged much about writing recently but that’s because I’ve been working on a long, slow project.

For a few years now I’ve been working on a couple of novels but one in particular is the most complete.

It’s a novel about a working mum, who struggles to find the right balance between her work and her home life.

After completing a very rough first draft I started an online course with Writing Magazine where for each assignment I submitted a chapter which was critiqued and re-written before sending the next chapter.

The course was good and really gave me the confidence to improve the rest of the novel. 

It took me a while but I completed a second and then a third draft and then sent it for feedback to the Romantic Novelist’s Association for a critique on the New Writers’ Scheme.  After receiving some positive feedback I redrafted it again and then sent it to my online writers’ group.

By this stage I actually felt that it was almost complete but it was still too long, so on my next read-through I cut out all the superfluous words and sentences I could find, aiming to reach for a total word count of 100,000.

I slashed and burned and killed my darlings but by the end of this draft I still had a wordcount of 108,000 words.

So, during January I have been laboriously working through the entire novel and yesterday I managed to achieve a word count of 99,999 words – yeh!

Now I need to dust off my synopsis – thankfully already written, research possible agents and then hopefully, in the very near future, I will be in a position to allow my child to fly the nest. 

I’ve been working so long on this project that I day I send it out for the first time will be a champagne day as far as I’m concerned – regardless of the outcome.

Catch Up

I can't believe that its already the middle of July and I haven't managed to post a single blog this month.

I just don't know where the time goes these days and its not because I've been writing. Working, yes, but not writing.

I am, though, trying to slot in the odd few minutes of editing whenever I get a chance. I'm currently working my way through a novel I sent to the RNA New Writers Scheme two years ago, but its a long, slow process.

Its the novel that I have done the most work on and its been in the pipeline for more years than I care to think about, but even so it has still  needed a lot of editing this time around.  My writing group have been looking at it too and giving me some valuable feedback (as ever) so I'm pleased about that.  So far they are enjoying it and say that they are disappointed that they can't read on when they get to the end of each section.  (Can't be all bad then).  I'm hoping to send them the final installment soon, so I'm keen to hear what they think of the finished story.  

Then its back to the drawing board and reworking the first three chapters so I can knock it into shape to send out to agents.  I'm looking forward to having it in a format that I feel happy enough to send out, but no doubt will have to steel myself to receive the inevitable rejections.

Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained as they say, and at least it will feel like I've achieved something, even if it does come bouncing right back to me.

Hope you are all being a little bit more productive than I am this summer.  

Linda