Yeah, it was a really good day today. I didn’t make any progress in the last few chapters of my novel, but I did revise the first 25 pages of my novel for the English 318 final. Now, I just need to find a place where I can safely submit it…
I’ve realized that this novel is not finished. Not at all. The rough draft is just about done, but to really make it a strong story, I’m going to have to do some serious outlining, figure what I need to cut, and add in some new elements at different places to keep it interesting. Now that I know what the main story is, I need to rewrite it from the beginning with that in mind.
I’m not disappointed by what I’ve got so far, though. It’s quite good for a rough draft. And I’m not frustrated that I need to do a deep revision before I feel it’s publishable. This is not a project that I’m going to work on for the next ten years without allowing anyone to see it. In fact, I’m already excited to start the next big project.
Trouble is, for the purposes of the English 318 final, I need to find a place where I can submit it. I was hoping to do something like Brandon told us, by finding an editor who’s taken a new novel that’s a lot like mine, but considering that the exam is due tomorrow, that’s probably not possible. Besides that, I’m probably more comfortable sending out a query instead of the first three chapters. Chapters one and two are going to be fairly solid, but chapter three is going to need some work.
So I’m going to end up spending quite some time tomorrow figuring all that out. And I don’t even know how to write a good query letter. Oh well. I guess I’m going to learn.
Today was really fun and relaxing. I took this really difficult, really killer exam in the morning. It was an open note, take home exam, but I just wanted to get it over with. It took me over three hours and almost 2,000 words. Yikes! Fortunately, I think I had a really solid understanding of everything (except maybe the big essay question, which was to explain how two different poli sci research traditions would approach health care reform).
Let me tell you, I was really happy to finish that beast and hand it in!
I did some errands for a few hours, including a whole bunch of stuff for the study abroad trip (paperwork, red tape, bureaucracy…blegh). Hung out at the army navy surplus store, and found a really interesting book on how to survive a thermonuclear holocaust. Good information for writing science fiction.
Then I went over to the capitol house and ended up hanging out there until one in the morning. It was way relaxing. Just hung out with Steve on the front porch for a long time, talking about random stuff and working on various projects and stuff. By the end of the day, we were listening to Satellite by Guster and everything was just mellow. All the doors in the house were open and the weather was beautiful. Good times.
