Progress Report #3

So… March happened. How’s the old saying go? “In like a lion, out like two lions riding sharks being chased by a T-Rex?” Something like that.

This was the month that I learned that progress can’t always be measured linearly. Writing is not simply forward or backward momentum; it is concentric circles. Your initial idea is a pebble on the water, creating ripples that travel outward as you build your world and your characters, adding details, dialogue, story. Then comes editing. Now you are moving inward, like the rings of a target as you tighten up your work, sentence by sentence, losing anything that doesn’t serve the story, your goal the 50-point bullseye, the core of the thing.

I am lucky enough to have both a writing coach and a mentor working with me right now, and within a couple of days, they each independently gave me similar feedback on two separate projects. Their advice: Go deeper with the story, not broader. (Imagine Tom Roth in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, commanding: “Well, go into detail! Delve!” But much more nicely, because Rebecca and Charlotte are wonderful.❤)

So, after a couple of days of full-blown stomping and pouting about doing another round of revisions, I put on my big girl pants (which by now were necessary because of all the eating of my feelings), set my current WIPs aside and started revision #6 of SOMETHING BETTER.

And you know what? It’s better. It’s so much better. I want to go back in time and snatch those early queries back out of agent inboxes: Don’t read that, read THIS!

It was a struggle; some days I edited up to eleven pages in a sitting, other days, I was lucky to get through a single scene. But now, at the end of the month, I have a tighter, more propulsive and compelling first act.

I am exhausted and grateful.

I know there is a real danger in writing of being paralyzed by perfection. Of getting stuck in “analysis paralysis,” and never moving beyond the editing phase. But in this case, I am so glad to have people around who support me, believe in me and trust me enough to encourage me to aim higher, to go for the bullseye.

March Wrap-up/Successes:

Writing: 6th read through/revision of SOMETHING BETTER - first 90 pages
Completed first draft of ACT 1 of WELCOME TO BLOOMS (approx. 13,000 words)
Accountability: Met with my WFWA Mentor twice, my coach once
Participated in Zoom Write-in sessions 2-3 times a week
Querying: Entered my first 300-word agent pitch contest
Education: Attended the first two days of the Women in Publishing Summit
Marketing: Social account followers: IG 451/Twitter 392, added SEO terms to my website
Self-care: Not a writing win, but I completed a 31-day neighborhood fitness challenge (for the first time ever, I can now do two one-minute rounds of push up/renegade rows on my toes!)
Books read: 7 (2021 total: 20/60)

April Goals:

Writing: Continue tightening up SOMETHING BETTER (Goal: edit approx 11 pages/day)
Querying: Submit SOMETHING BETTER to the WFWA Rising Star contest for unpublished women’s fiction
Focus on researching and culling my list of agents to query
Accountability: Continue meeting with my WFWA mentor, focused on polishing my query materials (synopsis, query letter, first 50 pages of mss)
Marketing: Participate in the #authorsinwords challenge, April 1-12 on IG
Read:
UPSTAGED by Diana Harmon Asher
WILDLAND by Rebecca Hodge
CASTE by Isabel Wilkerson
THE TRUTH ABOUT FOREVER by Sarah Dessen

Xoxo, y’all!