Not Finished
But kind of.
The story that has given me so much grief over the last - um, it's been a long time - finally came together in the last month or so. As always with me it was a matter of confidence. The book is more or less the version I attempted about three years ago. I lost confidence in it then and spent a long time lost in the weeds trying other approaches. These yielded some interesting writing but ultimately they weren't right for this story. The Book of Elizabeth had quite a few false starts too, but none as dramatic as this (actually, I'm leaning toward my next novel being the Elizabeth sequel, which as it stands now would kind of make the first one a false start...) I hope this is something I am getting better at recognizing. Maybe I am just one of those tinkerers that never knows when to quit. Or maybe I just never know what I want.
In any case, I am very happy that I have found my way to this place. The novel right now sits at about 424 pages, which is probably a little longer than it will end up. I'm going to let it cool its heels for a few weeks, and then clean it up before sending it to some beta readers. My hope is to see it released probably late this year/early next.
In the meantime, I do plan to go ahead with the story collection that has been neglected while I went off on this long weekend with the novel. That's actually been ready to go for a while now, so that should come together kind of quick.
And then it's on to the next one.
The story that has given me so much grief over the last - um, it's been a long time - finally came together in the last month or so. As always with me it was a matter of confidence. The book is more or less the version I attempted about three years ago. I lost confidence in it then and spent a long time lost in the weeds trying other approaches. These yielded some interesting writing but ultimately they weren't right for this story. The Book of Elizabeth had quite a few false starts too, but none as dramatic as this (actually, I'm leaning toward my next novel being the Elizabeth sequel, which as it stands now would kind of make the first one a false start...) I hope this is something I am getting better at recognizing. Maybe I am just one of those tinkerers that never knows when to quit. Or maybe I just never know what I want.
In any case, I am very happy that I have found my way to this place. The novel right now sits at about 424 pages, which is probably a little longer than it will end up. I'm going to let it cool its heels for a few weeks, and then clean it up before sending it to some beta readers. My hope is to see it released probably late this year/early next.
In the meantime, I do plan to go ahead with the story collection that has been neglected while I went off on this long weekend with the novel. That's actually been ready to go for a while now, so that should come together kind of quick.
And then it's on to the next one.
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