Friday, September 5, 2008

The Itch

So, a few people have my book right now, and are reading it. That's good, because I have some questions to ask them. I'll admit I'm kind of on tenterhooks for a couple of reasons.

1) I miss Harry and Charley. I did not expect this. In the moments after finishing I thought I was basically done. I'm not. Their story has gotten bigger, and is a part of the VERY big Sel Souris cycle of stories. Worse, a minor character has gotten her own story going in my head now. I can see a lot of places to expand the book. This should make me glad, I guess.

2) All of the above is basically meaningless if the book is a hunk of crap. It may very well be. I am too close to judge. I can't bring myself to re-read it again yet.

So, as I say, questions.

But I have to say, I'm glad for the itch in any case. Sometimes the stories have to be wrestled out, and sometimes they wrestle you, demanding attention.

The latter is best.
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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's funny you say this, because I wrote something similar at my blog a few weeks ago. I mentioned that you were doing something similar in regard to your own novel, though I was referring to Now England Sees (or whatever it winds up being called.)

G-

September 6, 2008 at 9:44 AM
Deborah Leiter Nyabuti said...

When I was officially "finished" with my (as yet unpublished) Alaska novel manuscript the first time (the first draft), which was now three years ago, it was 55,000 words. Before I started the project, I couldn't imagine ever writing a story that long. Since then, during the revision process, close to 20,000 words have been added in, and I think the book is much stronger as a result. One of my early readers liked it, but felt like it was a skeleton that needed more flesh.

That story's been wrestling in me for 9 years now, and I've still got the itch towards it. It will be done, I think, when it gets published or when I abandon it, and even as it is I have plenty of material for sequels... :)

The beauty of this is that writing begets writing. I started thinking, wow, how am I ever going to write a novel? Once I finished the first draft and some revisions, I had ideas for 5 or 6 more independent novel-length works. "The itch" is a beautiful thing...

September 6, 2008 at 7:55 PM
Anonymous said...

It's good you expanded it, not just for artistic reasons, but for publishability. A friend of mine was shopping a 50,000-word manuscript last year and he did eventually find a small press that was willing to take him on, but he also heard a lot of "we don't publish anything under 80,000 unless it's YA."

75,000... they'd probably overlook it being a bit short if they liked the book well enough (the trick is to not include your word count when you send it out, so publishers/agents learn your dirty secret after they're already sold on your writing.) But 55,000 is tough.

G-

September 8, 2008 at 9:27 AM

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