I am not sure if the April just past was excruciatingly long, or incredibly short. It managed to be both at once over here, which is its own kind of magic.
Last month I managed to finish the first draft of my WIP, Aconite Braid. I am incredibly pleased and there are a number of very complicated feelings I have about it, at least in part because this is the largest writing project I’ve managed to achieve serious goals with since the point my mental health trouble stopped me from writing.
I have been in the pit of despair, and somehow I’ve found my way out to the degree that I can actually make a whole book. Which feels amazing. I’m looking forward to making quite a few more, but, for now, one will do.
As with any first draft, it’s not quite ready for public consumption. In addition to needing to do some work to it myself – I think that I need to rework some exposition in the first quarter of the manuscript, for instance – I’m trying to put together a plan that’ll have me submitting to agents by August or so. I’m hoping to hire in some help to give the manuscript a look from a publishing industry perspective, so you’ll likely hear once more of my adventures in getting an assist from Jon Oliver in a few months.
Given that the end of my current writing season – January to May – is coming up in a couple of weeks, next season’s probably going to be a mix of working on Aconite Braid and investigating some self publishing options. I do have some old incomplete material which it’s feasible I could complete in-between working on Aconite Braid, and that might be a good choice for my next self publishing project. I’ll take a look at that and let you all know about it as things progress.
I will admit that right now, my life is very tiring. You may have seen the adventures I had when a squirrel fell down a bricked up chimney and needed some rescue/escape assistance, over on twitter. There’s been a lot of distracting stuff like that going on lately, including repairing my family’s PCs and needing to resolder a keyboard in the hopes of extending its lifespan. It’s all, theoretically, useful stuff to do? But very little of it is writing.
Thankfully, there’s more writing ahead – both in terms of revisions for Aconite Braid and in figuring out what my next WIP will be – and I look forward to getting back to it.
As ever, thank you all so much for your support. It both helps me do cool things like make self-publishing plans and hire in industry professional help, and just, y’know. Reminds me that I’m getting to entertain you all, and that’s an incredible way to reward me all on its own.
