Projects, Projects Everywhere, and Not a Page to Submit

[stephaniecain]

My best friend in high school always told me I had too many dreams. I wanted to fly helos for the Air Force. I wanted to be an archaeologist. I wanted to be an FBI agent. I wanted to write novels. I wanted to act. I wanted to sing. I wanted to be a cowgirl. My mother, of course, told me that it was good to have that many dreams. Problem was, I ended up majoring in history & creative writing, learning a virtually unemployable skill set. Maybe my best friend was closer to being correct than my mom was. Or maybe it wasn’t that I had too many dreams, but that I couldn’t pick one of those dreams to focus on first.

Something I’ve seen as I read blogs about the publishing world is that a writer should focus on one particular area of writing to make her name. (Never mind that Isaac Asimov published fiction and nonfiction in every single category of the Dewey Decimal system, apparently this isn’t as doable in the 21st Century as it was in the 1950s.) Since I have written epic fantasy, urban fantasy, romance, and crime fiction…this is a problem.

My current dilemma is that my urban fantasy is closest to being ready for publication, plus having three sequels/companion novels written/drafted so I need to revise that one. But I am way more in the mood to work on the epic fantasy, which needs to be completely overhauled and re-WRITTEN from the ground up. A huge project, but especially since I started using Patricia C. Wrede’s world-building questions to inspect and tweak my fantasy world, it’s one I look forward to.

I’ve tried using a bribe to move forward. I’ve told myself to revise the first 50 pages of the urban fantasy, just so I have a good submission packet to query with. Then I can turn my attention to the epic fantasy and make a few submission rounds with the urban fantasy to see if I get any interest. If I get any interest and they want a full manuscript, then I make a really fast revision of the other 100 pages.

We’ll see if this works…

Comments

Re: jumping in

[slightlyjillian.livejournal.com]

hey, thank you for taking the time to describe this for me. I've done my fair share of hit & miss (mostly miss) experimentation so having your insight gives a pretty good picture of where I still fall short. *chuckles*

I took about 8 months away from working in insurance to see what I could learn on my own. Well, I learned a lot--enough to know I don't have all the pieces to make it work let alone 'comfortable.' Nonetheless I'm going to keep building on what I've gained and see what happens.

My biggest problems were that I increased my volunteer hours (which I don't consider wasted--but definitely caused me to drift from the complete 'work day' of writing) and spacing out when I didn't have an immediate deadline to work toward. I knew those choices weren't adding up to 'professional author'... all that to say, living on savings at least taught me how to wear a tight belt and socializing took a nose dive.

I'd love to ask you more sometime!

(sorry for hijacking your journal, Steph! Good conversation starter. *grin*)

Re: jumping in

[stephaniecain.livejournal.com]

LOL I'm all for journal-hijacking if it's going to result in this! :)