Publish a novel

Okay, so the last time I wrote an entry for this goal I mentioned my unfortunate habit of spending too much time in the Internet’s publishing industry community. I cautioned myself that such a thing was an easy procrastination device, and one that has a way of making an aspiring writer feel productive. Self, why didn’t you listen to your wise Self of two months ago? I’ve discovered that one can pretty much burn all free time by reading author and agent blogs, perusing message boards, memorizing every agent listed in AgentQuery, etc. I suppose I have learned some useful stuff. I know a whole lot about query letters, agents’ timetables, and current trends in the industry. But I still don’t have a finished manuscript, and I’m not much farther along on my manuscript than I was last time I moaned about it to 43T.

So that’s it. I’m declaring a moratorium on my time spent reading about the publishing industry. I know enough about it now. I know who my favorite contemporary authors’ agents and editors are. I’ve read too many other people’s triumphant stories of publication. No more! I’ve got to work on my own book, or I’ll never have a reason to put all my pub. industry knowledge to good use!

Adam challenged me to have the novel’s first four chapters finished and polished by next Monday. If I don’t, I have to buy him a package of bacon. (Ick.) It’s a tight deadline, but if I stay away from the blasted Internet, I think I can make it.

I finished the majority of the first draft of my novel within a month and a half, but if I ever get this monster published and anyone ever asks me in an interview how long it took me to write, about fifteen years is closer to the truth. Why? Because it was when I was a wee thing in 1992 that I first wrote a novel draft featuring my current main character as narrator, along with his girlfriend, his best friend, his family, etc. There have been modifications along the way, but it’s still the same guy, and I’ve been trying to write his story ever since I was in middle school.

What I have now doesn’t stand up as a story on its own. I’m happy with what I accomplished in the draft, but parts of it are a mess of (insert scene here) and (finish this scene later) and (rewrite this, please!). I have a lot of work to do. But I think I got to a breaking point of my investment in this character in that I feel like I’ve known him and his buddies on my own long enough. I don’t have that publication lust the same way I did when I was younger, when I wanted to publish more than I wanted to write. Now I want to write, but I feel like I’ve been holding in my ideas for far too long. I want to tell my story – well, my character’s story – to others.

I’d like to be querying agents on my book by the end of the year. Also, until I’ve gotten farther on my second draft, I need to quit researching agents. I think I’ve memorized the name of every agency in New York. Researching the publishing industry is one of those unfortunate procrastination devices that makes you feel like you’re doing something productive… when indeed you’d be doing better to finish your chapter instead.

I have this goal on my list because it’s been something I’ve wanted to do even before I knew the word “novel.” I was one of those precocious wee ones who was “going to be a writer,” and who informed people of this at every chance she got. Sadly, I sometimes think I was closer to my goal then than I am now. At least I believed in myself and my goal at age 8. Then I started realizing that, hey, kids in elementary school don’t publish novels. I kept writing, though, occasionally sharing my work with my parents and often sharing my work with friends, who were always impatient to see my next chapter.

In high school, my family got a computer and I found so much joy in typing out my novels and seeing how great they looked on paper. I loved going to Print Preview on Microsoft Works and pretending that I was looking at galley prints of my soon-to-be-published book.

But then, when I was 15, we got an online service for the first time, and I allowed my idea that I was too young to be published to make me lazy about my writing for a long time. I discovered online journalling when I was 17, and pretty soon I was addicted to getting nearly instant feedback on the entries I wrote and posted. I knew my entries weren’t really publishable quality, but I didn’t realize what bad habits I was creating for myself and my writing. I’m 25 now (26 in less than two weeks) and I feel like I’ve gotten so far in the online journalling hole that I have a problem writing for myself at all anymore. My saving grace has been National Novel Writing Month, which I’ve done every November since 2001. That’s the one month that I write fiction for myself. I’ve posted only a few excerpts of my NaNo novels online—no more than a few paragraphs. It’s been nice keeping that fiction secret.

It’s been a long time, but I’m trying to get out of my rut. I’m trying to make myself recognize that online journalling (“blogging” now, huh?) and the instant gratification that comes with it is not teaching me good habits, and that I can write hundreds and hundreds of Livejournal entries and not be any closer to having anything of publishable quality under my belt. There’s being a good online writer, and then there’s being a good fiction writer, and unfortunately there’s not too much overlap between the processes of getting to those two pinnacles.

Lately, I’ve been trying to write a lot in my paper journal - five or more pages a day - just to write out all the crap that collects in my head: complaining about work and people and my poor social skills; responses to movies I’ve seen and books I’ve read; long commentary on social outings; and, of course, all my meta-writing (like this entry!) that comes so easily. It’s working. My head feels a lot clearer, and more ready to dive into something that’s not all self-analytical.

It came to me on Thursday, when I was making up my weekend to-do list, that I should revisit my NaNoWriMo novel from 2003. It was an absurdist young adult novel in which I used a big ensemble of characters my sister and I created years ago. Yesterday, I opened the Word file containing the novel draft. I hadn’t opened that file in well over a year. I sat and read the first third of the draft, and, lo and behold, I enjoyed it! I laughed at the right places! The characters were sympathetic! And it’s fun coming back to something like this after such a long time because I don’t remember how it’s going to end (though I do remember that I had a lot of trouble coming up with an ending). I have enough distance from the original creation of the draft to be able to go back and edit it and see if I can really make something of it. Over the past year, I’ve kept coming back to the idea of trying to put together a publishable YA novel instead of working on adult literary fiction. It’s a genre I love to read and write. I’m going to see what comes of this draft. I’m excited.