#writing while walking

I just finished the zero draft for my most recent project. I haven’t written enough the past two years, between being unemployed and then scrambling to catch up from the fallout. And this manuscript accessed some parts of me that were difficult to face. I hope you can all read this book about a girl discovering the fantasy world her grandmother has already traveled very soon.

Finally got back to my novel after a few months of being busy with work and needing a break after some of the pain of querying. Casually pumped out 4,000 words. Guess I need to get out to the coffee shop more often!

“For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.” ― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

Querying is hard. It often feels hopeless. It’s not the first time you’ve heard this, I’m sure, but it’s true: submitting a novel to agents is a battle, you send a work of your art, a work that you know is worth being out in the market, but then you just have to wait. And hope. Hope that someone takes a chance on you, and sees that your book is worth selling, fits on their list. You can only wait and hope, and watch the rejections come back, and hope that it’s in the mailbox of someone who will see what your novel gives, and want it.

I know it’s time to start writing a novel when the characters start talking and won’t stop. When they’re talking just by themselves. When they won’t leave me alone. Today I was walking to the library when my character started talking and I had to stop and scribble it all down in my little green notebook. There’s lots more research to do for the full novel’s real first draft, but the zero draft writing has officially begun.

Edits can be stressful, but between the rain and wind out my window, my manifestation candle glowing, and the workspace I've created for myself, I'm feeling intensely peaceful. About halfway finished with my final edit of my YA contemporary before I start sending it out.

Sending a novel you love out into the world is…not easy. Virginia Woolf talks a lot about it in her journals—interestingly, she would dread that people would hate it, but once someone did, she would feel better. It reminded her that she didn’t care about what people thought, as long as she could keep writing. I understand what she means. The worst part is the waiting. Woolf feared indifference more than critique—the worst thing I could imagine is sending my novel to a friend or an agent and knowing that they have nothing to say about it. Even the rejections or critiques are better than the silence of waiting.

There are exciting things ahead. I finished editing my novel, and truly think it’s evolved in such a beautiful way. I’m reading and reviewing, planning to query starting tomorrow, and there are celebrations on the horizon.