Revisions and Worries
Started revising Chwedl. Turned the first chapter into the prologue that it is, and began the slow and painful process of cleaning up the prose and fixing my terrible dialog punctuation. I’ve had nearly two months break from this novel, and I still can’t look at it objectively. It’s probably not as terrible as I think it is. Probably. Also, I really need a real title for the book. The best so far I can come up with is something like “The Hounds of Llynwg” or just “Cwn” (welsh for “hounds”). Both of which aren’t terribly catchy and still probably too “oh god, book full of unpronounceable names ahead” flashing. Of course, this book is full of welsh names. Word spellcheck hates it, with a passion (actually, active spellcheck packed up and went home about 50k words into the novel). I’ve doomed myself to doing something with this book, however, by signing up for a workshop which involves editing the first 50 or so pages, writing a proposal/query to a real editor, and then mailing the damn thing. I’m not panicking. Yet.
I also seem to have sent out all my stories on submission, leaving myself nothing to send in for the first quarter Writers of the Future contest. Oops. So I have about 20 days to write something and get it in the mail. I have about four short story ideas brewing that should be ready for the page when I find a moment, as well as a novella. I’d like to get the novella done and submit that for WotF, but with the holidays and my novel revisions, I’m not holding my breath.
My third novel project is started, but I have no outline or concrete plot yet. I do have a working title “One and Many”. Not catchy, I know. I suck at titles. I need to inject myself with essence of Elizabeth Bear (don’t ask me what that might be) because she has the best titles all the time and I could really use her brain about now. Or I could just call it “fat fantasy with maps”, which is what it is. I’m aiming for less than 110k words. I also want it done by the time I go to the workshops in Feb.
The next novel project was supposed to be the Casimir Hypogean trilogy redrafting, but that’s now pushed back to at least March, and probably back more since my brain has been half-hijacked by a vampire novel. Yeah, fricken vampires. And no, not sparkly ones. Abusive, control freak, obsessive, scary ones. So we’ll see. I’m not writing that novel without an outline though, so it better shape up. One seat-of-pants novel is enough for the year. Seriously. I love me my outlines.
I’m also taking a short story workshop. And quaking in fear about that, too. I know it’ll be good for me, but I worry about not being any good, not being able to deliver a story at all, and other stupid fears that hopefully will get out of my system before Feb.
So that’s what’s up with me. Now, back to the novel. Maybe in a hundred pages or so I’ll start liking it. Maybe.
