As 2019 seems to be the year of epiphanies, here’s my latest: moving is a pain in the ass and unconducive to productivity.
One very mad month later, we’ve fully moved in to our new house, if you ignore the small piles of boxes in certain rooms and the multiple-item-checklist of found issues that we’re still waiting for our builder to address. Despite the craziness of vendors/trades constantly dropping by unannounced, I feel incredibly fortunate to be in this beautiful new house.
The next step? Actually furnishing it. 😛
Writing Update
Unfortunately, all this chaos has made writing difficult. After abandoning my rewrite of Investigation, Mediation, Vindication, I’m still only a few chapters into the first draft of Red Right Hand. Or rather… I’m eight chapters in, but six of those chapters are just variants on chapter 1. Reconnecting with my MC’s voice was harder than expected, but the real challenge is that RRH is a sequel, and therefore needs to recap what happened in the first book.
The thing is… a lot of stuff happens in See These Bones1. Weaving all of the necessary information into the narrative–without murdering the pace–has proven difficult. Knowing that the doorbell could ring at any moment with someone who wants to clean the grout off our floors or fix our broken cabinets makes it even harder. It’s been a long time since my days of scribbling on on napkins in crowded bars. These days, I need peace and quiet to write.
As usually happens, the moment I switched to writing Red Right Hand, I came up with a better way to handle the rewrite of IMV. It’s a more substantial effort than my previous, failed effort, but one I intend to tackle… after the first draft of RRH is complete.
In the meantime, I’ve continued to dedicate every Thursday to writing new poetry. I have one poem left to write in my (sort of) Christmas-themed collection. It’s been a lot of fun. I’m used to writing one-off poems, but because I knew these poems were intended to be a collection, I’ve really focused on varying their voice and style. I think the end result might be pretty good. We’ll see!
Querying Update
A common aphorism is that ‘no news is good news’. In the case of querying, that’s not true. I have very little to report on the query front, and that’s unfortunate. I did get a reply on one of my partial requests, but it ended up being a rejection. One of the nicest ones I’ve gotten, to date, but still… There’s also been no further word from either of the two agents who have my full manuscript for review. That’s worrying. Hopefully, I’ll have better news next month.
My query goals for the month have also taken a bit of a hit. I’ve only sent out a handful of new queries, instead of the 10-20 I’d planned for. As we move into April, that will also have to change. The surest way to fail is to not try at all… that’s an aphorism that actually is true.
Bracket Update 2
Busted. So busted. I blame my complete lack of knowledge when it comes to NCAA basketball. And that my alma mater, Johns Hopkins, never had a D1 basketball team, let alone one with a shot at the tournament.
Site Update
Once again, I’m squeezing in my monthly post just before the month expires. That’s not great either3. I’m going to reschedule my poem day to be the first Tuesday of every month, and see if I can focus on some meatier updates for the tail end of each month.
Next Month…
Per the above, I’ll be sharing a new poem on Tuesday, April 2nd. I also plan to write a post about character… finding the voice, definining traits, avoiding the power fantasy, etc. Basically, all the things I’ve consciously or unconsciously had to address with the characters in my two series. Hopefully, it will be of interest to some of you. Until then, have a great rest of the month!
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