You guys are so sweet! So many people came by and left the sweetest comments on my blog about me winning Cherry’s Nationals trip. So thank you so much for your support and kind words. I love you guys!!
So I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. What this means, this gift I’ve received. I went to Nationals last year, but it was quite different. I gave myself permission to just have fun and take it all in. My pitching appointment got cancelled and instead of trying to find someone else, I just let it go. But this year it’s going to be different. With this gift I’m going to really make it worth it.
I want to see results from this Nationals. I’m going to hold myself to a higher standard, for myself and for Cherry. Cherry has enough belief to financially back someone on a trip to Nationals, I want to be able to show her the results of that backing. I want to come away having gone to a lot of workshops, with ideas and information exploding in my head. I want to have pitched a damn good book that leaves the editors/agents eyes alight with interest as they ask for the full.
Sooo that would mean I need to write that book first. That’s my goal, and I wrote it and put it in Cherry’s goal box again. I plan on getting the bulk done during NaNo next month. I’ve come to realize something. I have two longer books that I think are pretty good, but have two big flaws. The first one they both have: They’re not long enough. I wrote them before I knew about ‘the format.’ So my two books which I thought were single title, are about 20k short of being so. The second flaw: I wrote these both almost two years ago. This was before I knew about deep POV and wasn’t as strong on showing, not telling. I’ve gone through and updated them, but I’m still not sure.
The point is I obsess over these two books. I want to find them a home. I haven’t worked on another single title book for a year, because I want to sell these first. And I just realized it’s holding me back. I have one last NY link with these books, and if it comes back rejected, then I’m subbing them to epubs. It’s not that I don’t think they’re good enough for NY, because I think they are. But NY is tough to break into, and the length is already a big strike against me. Epubs are there and waiting, and are open to all lengths of books. And I’d rather focus my energy on writing a new book, rather than going back through two books and flushing it out to add 100 pages to each one.
Does anyone else have this problem? Have a book that’s ‘holding them back’ from going on to write the next one? Because we all know that with each book your writing improves. What’s holding you back?
Anyway, here’s my Halloween pic of the day. This is about how I felt before I gave my workshop on Friday. (Nervous)
