A Week in Writing #134

I would say that this was a pretty inspired week for me.

I feel very reinvigorated with my writing, maybe that's because I'm making progress on the re-write of Familiar Stranger. Last week I was about 12,000 words in. This week so far I'm up to a little over 28,000. It helps a great deal that I'm plopping back in chapters I've already written, but I'm having to update them to a slightly different story, so there is still some writing involved. Not only am I having to edit, but I'm having to write in missing passages to reconnect pieces that hadn't been connected before.

Frankly, this is how a lot of my other books have gone. I won't talk about them like they're real, that is published works, rather than just novels sitting on my hard drive, but I've often borrowed from column A and added them to column B. I think it's part of my process. I'm not the type of writer who maps everything out from beginning to end before writing a letter. I'm more of seat-of-the-pants type. I have a vague idea of what I want to happen and where and how it will end, but all the details sort of fill themselves in as I go. This is like my twelfth dance with this book, so I kind of know most of the steps by heart by now. That doesn't mean there won't be stumbling blocks in the way. I've come up against them before and that's sort of why this is my twelfth time through.

I feel like the time change has given me more of the day. I was expecting it to kick my ass, but it didn't. It's psychological I know, but it's not pitch black outside when I get home and I feel a little more regenerated rather than ready to call it a night. That is not to say I'm not still tired and a little sleepy after a day's work, but I think I'm getting more done.

It also helps that there has been progress on our comic book but that it hasn't been all time consuming getting there. Our letterer has finished page 20, the final page of Issue #1. Still, have the cover and the credits, but this is really good.

Our colorist had sort of an off week since she was moving. We've still gone back and forth over a panel on page 4. Not quite right, but I'm not sure how to express to her what we're looking for. I've sent examples from various sources. I'm hopeful we'll get it right and move on. She's really super responsive, which is great. Even when I don't expect her to write back, she does, I think it's like past two in the morning sometimes when she does.

Our artist is getting through page 16 of issue #3 and should be starting on the last four next week. We always seem to have a little back and forth on pages and panels, but we're doing the best we can to get it right. But we only communicate via email, so it's difficult to sometimes discuss concepts. He tends to just redraw what we've asked and rarely has any comments, which would be nice. We'd like to think of it as a collaborative effort.

I also followed up on my submission of Personal and Professional, the one book I've tried to query lately, with the agent, whom I found through Submittable. So far this has taken a textbook query process. I think I first contacted them back in June with the first five chapters. They were surprisingly prompt in responding, but I had to follow up with them after a couple of months. They asked for the entire manuscript, but the way Submittable works, in that the agent has to reopen the portal, that took until about 6 months ago to get to them. So soon, one way or another, Schroedinger's cat will either be alive or dead. Will update here when I know.

No new review, but I did publish one on Saturday, Westworld (1973) as part of Western month on Trophy Unlocked. The pageviews have been surprisingly strong with about 40 so far. I wonder if people are thinking it's about the HBO series. Had one of those embarrassing moments after I published it. I realized I had misspelled one of the lead's names throughout and had to fix it, hopefully before anyone noticed. Probably not, but oops!

So next week, I'm hoping to get more done on Familiar Stranger as well as more done on our comic book. Hopefully, I'll stay inspired next week as well.