Once again, I have found myself wanting in the ability to multitask. While in Atlanta, I had hoped to break some ground on the clean-up of Petra, but I had Halloween stories to read and evaluate, and I wanted to get those out of the way. So I did.
(And you know, sitting in a hot tub and drinking beer with friends is not exactly conducive to writing, anyway. But it sure is relaxing. Thanks again, neechykat and B!)
It’s possible that my own Halloween story does not totally suck. It definitely needs a rewrite, but upon rereading, I find it’s not as bad as I first thought. Maybe.
As I was finishing the Halloween stuff, I got the idea to put off the cleanup of Petra until after I had done my rewrite of Petra Released. I had actually decided to do this, then reconsidered. Now that I have two volumes in this series, I have to give some thought to continuity–something I’ve never had to deal with before. And there are a couple of unresolved issues in the first novel that will directly impact the second.
So now that I have a (relatively) clean slate and a (relatively) clear head about the future direction, I return to Petra. This will include not only tidying up the manuscript, but writing an outline and preparing a submission package. These are not my most favorite things to do. I absolutely hate writing outlines, as do many authors of my acquaintance. I mean, seriously–here I have an 80K novel, and you want me to boil it down to a few thousand words? Hey, genius, if I could have written this story that short, don’t you think I would have?
Ah, but that’s just me being whiny. I’ll get over it.
One update for Write Club: a tier two rejection from Weird Tales. It actually came last week, but I neglected to mention it. Response time was one month.
I’m out.
