Showing posts with label editing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label editing. Show all posts

Not Writing

Today was going to be the day I started writing again. My agent has okayed my edit ideas and now all I have to do is breathe life into them and transform my novel into something sellable.

So, I got up at 11.30am, drank coffee and read a newspaper, had a bath, peeled off an hour's worth of wallpaper, got changed, helped Jeremy paint the garage, microwaved some dumplings, got changed again, sat and stared at my computer, called my mother, cried (about nothing in particular), called my mother again, went to the supermarket, lit a fire, cried a little more (about the lack of writing I've done today along with nothing in particular), checked facebook, checked twitter, checked email, read the guardian online, read bbc news online, aaaaaand finally scribbled down on paper a few plot points expanding on the plot points I've already come up with.

I did not add a single word to my novel. I did delete about 5 words.

Tomorrow. It's all going to happen tomorrow. Now, if you'll excuse me I'm going to go wash the ink off of my  jumper (I was leaning on a pen while writing this), eat dinner courtesy of Trader Joes (with a little help from Jeremy), sit by the fire and watch repeats of Spartacus: Blood and Sand on cable (which seems to be code for gratuitous sex and violence). I'll mostly not be thinking about the 1 month deadline I've given myself for doing this rewrite. Or the half-stripped wall that glares at me every time I go into my dining room (it may also be Jeremy that's doing the glaring... he doesn't agree that half-stripped is better than full-ugly).

So

So I managed (somehow, inexplicably, miraculously) to get an agent. A living breathing agent who likes my book and believes it has potential and sends me editorial comments so that I can make it better and more publishable (or maybe just publishable).

An agent.

Wow.

Thank you God, thank you friends, thank you Jeremy for making unemployment = time-to-write rather than time-to-move-in-with-my-parents. Of course this doesn't mean that I actually will get published, but it means I have a better chance than if it was just little old me sending of my manuscript to publishers without another edit and without making it publishier (I've noticed that the more I get into writing, the less attention I pay to whether words are actually words).

That's all.