My Second Book

For the past few weeks I was in the habit of returning from work and putting a blog post up. This wasn’t always possible since I wasn’t always home at a reasonable hour. Aside from work, I am also actively looking for a new place and viewings take up a good deal of my time. However, I do my best not to make excuses for inactivity and will still be trying to post at least four times a week.

With that said, I have also been doing more writing when it comes to my second book, The Visitor.

Since the last literary agent rejected my first novel, Elseworld, I have been focusing on writing The Visitor. My goal is to finish a draft by September and then have a polished version by the end of the year. I then want to start pursuing publication for The Visitor. My hope is that I can get a positive response with The Visitor, get it published, and then pursue publication for Elseworld.

It does pain me to move on from Elseworld for the moment, since I spent so much time writing, re-writing and editing it. The final draft I have now is much better than the first one I wrote back in 2008, but it is apparently still lacking. I don’t want to say it’s perfect, but I think the best thing I can do for that book is to move on from it, for the moment at least.

One important reason that I had to re-write Elseworld so many times was that I typically wrote without brainstorming. I always had a general outline for a story of slavery and I knew how I wanted it to end for both of the main characters. However, plot developments along the way were always developed on the spot. I found that the more I tried to brainstorm, the less I would write. Of course, the two are linked and many prolific writers use brainstorming as an essential first step. Perhaps due to some level of laziness, I found that I had to start writing in order for anything productive to happen with my writing. The issue was that I would recognize plot holes or simply develop better ideas each time I went back to edit.

Now that I have written one book, I do find it easier to brainstorm effectively prior to writing. Since I typically only write 500-1000 words a day, I restrict my brainstorming to this range; developing an outline for the next few pages. I am hoping that this leads to less rewrites and a simpler editing process for The Visitor. Hopefully, I am ready to pursue publication again when the new year comes.

Maybe I am just chasing a pipe dream and getting published isn’t mean to be for me, but I’m compelled to keep trying.

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