Silence

I'm still slogging through this revision of Devil's Key. I want the draft I send back to Elizabeth to be as good as I can make it because if she doesn't like it, that's it. I won't have another chance to have her be my agent. I have yet to hear back from Samantha McFerrin about Princess Pots, nor have I heard from Adams Literary about Devil's Key. Those are the only two queries I have out right now and I've heard nothing but silence. I'm hoping it's a golden silence and not a deathly silence, but time will tell. I have learned that immediate responses are almost always rejections. Not that I'm counting days or anything (38 and 22, respectively), but I do hope to hear back before New Year's. Adams Literary's exclusive runs out the second week in December. But I have enough to keep me busy until then. My goal is to finish this revision of DK in the next three weeks and get it to Elizabeth before Christmas. Clock's ticking.

Janette Rallison

I met Janette Rallison last week. She's so cool. She was invited to speak at my children's Jr. High and High Schools, but she also spoke to the young women at church. I introduced myself and started asking about writing and the publishing industry in general. Then I invited her out to lunch. Being a kind, helpful person, she offered to review my first three chapters. Hooray! I handed them over two days later. Embarrassingly enough, I'd never read any of her books. So I stole Lindsey's copy of It's A Mall World After All and read it straight through. It was very cute (and clean), which are elusive qualities in today's young adult literature. If you are looking for a fun YA read, I definitely recommend her books.

Anyhow, Janette met with my writers group on Thursday evening, returned my marked up chapters, and offered valuable feedback. THANK YOU JANETTE! I internalized more about fiction writing from her in four hours than I did at an all day conference. So I'm back to the editing chopping block. However, now I am focused with specific things to fix. I only hope that once the surgery is over, my story will have new life.

Revisions, revisions

A year ago, if someone had told me that in order to write a book, I'd have to re-write it three times with several rounds of revisions in between, I might have quit before even beginning. It's truly a labor of love because even if I find an agent who sells my story, I'm not likely to earn more than 1 cent for every word I wrote. That's some seriously low wages. Once I'm done with this round of revisions on Devil's Key though, I won't do any more until an agent or publisher requests them. I'm finally at a place where I'm comfortable with what I've written and can honestly say that I've enjoyed the process. Hopefully, the lessons I've learned this time around will reduce the number of re-writes with the next story. Maybe. But as Shannon Hale wrote on her blog, the first draft has to exist before it can be changed into the draft that you keep.