A Lonely Business

The redraft of part one is printing as I type, so that means I'm a third of the way through the book. I decided that now is a good time to go back and edit so for the next few weeks I'm going to be reading through the print out and trying to make the whole piece as good as good can be before moving on to Part 2.

Things have been moving so slowly recently to be bordering on depressing. My head's full of doubts is this any good, is it too long, am I wasting my time? All that jazz. I tried reading some online writer's advice pages to see if I could find anything that would cheer me up, convince me that all these hours I could be out having fun at the pub / generally bumming around isn't actually a complete loss. If anything they depressed me more; talk of how some agents don't even read the manuscripts they're sent, how unlikely it is to get picked up by an agent at all, they get hundreds of manuscripts a week. It does make me want to scream. It's like being one person in a vast herd, all of us screaming 'I'm different!' to the agents up on their balcony, just another face in the crowd.

But I suppose I've just got to have faith in myself. I'll never know unless I try, eh? Plus, I've worked a slush pile before and a good 90% of the stuff was quite rubbish, sloppy and only half finished. People who have written the first draft and been so excited at finishing they've sent it off already. So, I'm convinced that sitting here taking my time over it is going to pay off.

Well, I'm not convinced really. There's still the chance this is a pants novel and no one will like it and I really aren't that great. But I think that about all my work and those nice people from Murky Depths seemed to like it.

Argh, tis a lonely business this writing malarkey.

Thanks for reading.