Novelled out
Today, I have been over and over and over the prologue and first chapter of my novel-in-progress. I had over 500 words to strip out of it, and lots of comments from the novelling group session last Tuesday to take into account.
It’s been weird – I had to restructure the whole opening of the first chapter – but good. I’m learning to pick up on my writing habits, some of which are good, some of which aren’t. I managed to bring it under the wordcount limit for the Debut Dagger submission, though, and I’m happy with how it’s coming out. I think it’s stronger now.
Then I had to go through the synopsis and get that into shape. That was harder, and I wound up rewriting the whole thing (as in, retyping it from start to finish). It’s very stripped down now, but that’s the point, so that’s okay. It’s still missing a subplot or two, but there’s only so much that I can do in 1,000 words. Luckily, they’re not expecting it to be accurate. ;) If I remind myself that it’s a selling tool and not a true representation of the story, then I can make peace with my obsessive need for accuracy.
It’s tempting to submit it now – I’ve got it all formatted correctly and set up. But no, I think I’ll let it rest for a day or so, read it over for those last-minute OMG typos, and then submit it.
I don’t know if I have a hope in hell in this competition, but I might as well try. I’ve learned lots in the process already, and hopefully that’ll put me in a good position for completing the second draft. And it feels good to kick off the submission ball, even if I am going to be waiting for it to hit me in the head on the rebound.
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