For Accountability

My goal this year is to write three complete novel first drafts so that I get into the habit of finishing things. I figured that since I’ve spent the last two years focused almost exclusively on revisions that having a drafting goal would be a good thing.

So far, it’s going surprisingly well. As of March 1st, I’m just shy of the 50K word-mark for the first of the three novels, which I’ve projected will be somewhere around 75k words.

In the last half of February, I was ahead of schedule, so I took some time to do a little more in-depth research that I’d usually save until revisions, and then I started exploratory writing on a new story.

In a week I’d written almost 14k words.

I got pretty hyperfocused on that story and I’m excited for it, but now it’s March and I have to return to my work in progress. I took the weekend off to give me some brain space to get back into that manuscript and now I have to get through 25k words this month in addition to prepping materials for a writing workshop I’m attending in April. The quicker I can get through those things the sooner I can return to the other story, which will be the second first draft I’ll try to complete this year.

Another thing I worked on in February was preparing to query my completed manuscript. I’ve been drafting a query letter, writing a synopsis, and researching various literary agents in an attempt to find those who are accepting queries whom I think will be a good fit for my book.

I find the prospect of querying pretty daunting and I’m really glad that I’ve spent the last year submitting short stories to markets and getting rejection letters. Yes, I’m glad to have gotten rejection letters because now I’m not afraid of getting rejected. I’ve done it and then I went out and did it again and again and hopefully I’ll keep doing it because that means I’m submitting.

I think it also helps, thinking of this as practice querying. I’m not quite in that mindset yet, but I’m almost there. And once I’m fully there, I think I’ll be able to get my queries sent without too much anxiety.

Well, there’s an inside look at my writing agenda for the year.

If anyone thinks they’d be up for doing an Alpha Read of my WIP sometime starting in May or June, let me know in the comments and I’ll add you to the list. I’ll be looking for comments on big picture things like it the plot makes sense and if the characters work more than line edits, so if you don’t feel like you can deliver that kind of critique let me know and I can save you for a later draft.

Thank you for reading.