This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
You can listen to Anna’s podcasted novel over on her website www.annabellwrites.com and follow her on twitter @annabell_writes
For far too long I’ve been making excuses when friends have enquired about my writing and how it is going with publishers. I’ve come out with a list of excuses longer than my arm, ‘its the wedding’ or ‘work's been too busy’. But to be honest I haven’t put in any ground work for ages. An agent or publisher isn’t just going to pluck me out of the internet and magically give me a contract – no matter how many times I’ve wished it would ala Noel Edmond’s cosmic ordering.
I haven’t subbed a novel in over a year, in fact it is getting close to two years. Two years – where did that time go to? I just got sucked into tweeting, blogging and my podcast novel and I don’t think I’ve honestly put in all the hours of writing like I did when I wrote my first book.
Since I returned from the honeymoon I’m a women on a mission. No longer do my evenings have to be spent making centre pieces or favours. Instead, I’m writing. I’ve managed to almost finish editing an American Wedding (my podcast novel) so that I can release it as an ebook on Kindle, just in time for Christmas and I’ve written 30,000 words of a brand new novel.
The new novel I’m writing is the one I planned out chapter by chapter, and it really helps . It's a fairly complicated plot for me to write as it jumps between two main characters in rotation, and not only does it mean I know where I’m going, it also reminds me where I was the chapter before the one I wrote. Which means I’ve been averaging a chapter per writing session in an evening (these are short chapters around 2,000 words) but still 2,000 words a night is more than I’ve written in a long, long time. I’m hoping to have finished a very rough draft the new novel by Christmas, meaning I can sub in the new year. And then the only reason I can trot out about why I don’t have an agent or am published is that my writing is simply not good enough and I need to do more work!
I also entered the Mills and Boon short story contest which was a bit scary. Not only was it pure romance, which isn’t really what I write, it was very public. People could read each entry and mark it out of 5. I averaged about 2.5 on the ratings, which isn’t 5, but I was still happy. But even better than that people made comments. Whilst people seemed to like the plot, and apparently I hooked them in with action at the beginning, the readers felt it lost pace with too much back story too soon.
This was brilliant advice. I’ve since gone back to the opening of my new novel and cut the entire first chapter, starting instead in the action – the back story will have to be teased out of the rest of the book.
I’m more excited about writing then I have been in months. I just need to keep up the momentum, as by hook or by crook I will publish this book, or at the very least finish it!