I just hit the halfway word count! I’m aiming for 60,000 words, and I passed 30,000 last weekend. It was going well at first, then I got hung up on some plot stuff. Last week I had dinner with my editor friend, and we talked through the second half of the book at a quiet Chinese restaurant. Now things are working again.
And what’s cool is that I didn’t realize how amazing that dinner was until I was thinking about it today. I mean, that’s the kind of thing “real” writers do. Have dinner with editors in quiet Chinese restaurants and hash out plots.
Up until five years ago, I was still printing the first three chapters of a novel and driving it to the post office and mailing it out with a self addressed, stamped envelope and hoping desperately for six to eight months that this would be my lucky break. Then the SASE would appear in my mailbox with a rejection slip in it. Back to the post office again. This had been the story of my life for years and years. And years. I’d had a few “yeses” from small magazines, but nothing seemed to help get those novels published.
Then I looked at online publishing, and I fell head over heels into the m/m fiction world, and things have been looking up (very much up!) ever since. I’ve gone from not having anyone know I exist to corresponding with readers from all over the world who enjoy what I write. And, ah, getting money, too.
And having dinner with a professional editor discussing the plot of a book that’s only half written.
Would I have been sitting there without putting in the years of SASEs? Absolutely not. That’s how I learned to write. But it’s awfully nice not to have to go to the post office with a brown envelope every eight months.
Okay, back to writing…