No Nano

So I started this month with hopes of doing Nano again. I had so much success last year with my latest and greatest that I was so looking forward to generating another story to write home (and to the publishers) about. But, alas, over 2K into my next story and I decided that I couldn't split my time between the one I'm revising to send to the publisher and a new one and still get my work done and market my husband's books. At first I felt like a total loser. It's something that really helps me and gets my butt into gear to move onto another story. Especially when I've been talking to my fellow writers, Sybir and Rogue Poet, about it. But the truth is that I'm not ready to move on. I thought I was finished with Dark Earth (my Nano creation from last year) but I received comments back from others this summer after RWA, which caused me to delete about 20K from my story, bringing my 80K-300-page story down to 60K and a lot less pages. I had one agent from the conference interested in a partial and an editor wanting to see a full. I thought that my story was finished barring a grammar and consistency check. Oh, how I was wrong.

"Revision," William C. Knott says in The Craft of Fiction, is like "wrestling with a demon," where there "is no escape for almost anyone can write; only writers know how to rewrite. It is this ability alone that turns the amateur into a professional." (Frey, James N. How to Write a Damn Good Novel. St. Martins Press, New York: 1987.)

I'm almost up to 70K now and am on page 150 and nearing 300 pages again. My characters are coming to life. My voice is getting bolder. Will it need more work after this revision? Probably. But my goal is to get this to a place before the year's end where I can send it to the editor, because I'm not going to let this opportunity slip away. It's a slap in the face ofauthors out there who haven't gotten the chance to pitch their stories. Once I am finished at the beginning of the year, I will set this aside and start another. Right now, first things first. Finish what I started. Body slam the demon.