Image: Markus Rodder via Flickr

Image: Markus Rodder via Flickr

Yes, I’ve been a terribly horrible blogger, but if it’s any consolation, know that my words have instead been poured into that infamous novel-in-progress.

Yes, I’ve been making progress & it feels good. Admittedly, most of the progress made has less to do with me being a diligent self-motivated worker & more to do with the looming deadline for my novel class & the overwhelming need to impress my favorite writing instructor with these new pages. Hey, but whatever keeps me on task!

So, the new noveling class is going well. It feels so good to be back with my favorite writing instructor (from here on out referred to as FWI), & already I’m feeling the love. Here’s what I got back last week from him for one of my critiques:

Hurry up and publish your novel so I can recommend you to teach one of these courses [in the] Writer’s Program. Your readings are that good.

Sorry, but my writer/editor ego relishes these kudos. Pathetic I know! Chalk it up to the fragile artist’s ego…ok, so mine’s not really so fragile. It’s just nice to be patted on the back & share it publicly. 

As for the novel-in-progress, I managed to string the two threads of my first 50-pages back together. In the end I realized that it was fine to start with & I never should have messed with the structure in the first place. Although, I did decide to tweak said structure just a bit. Already I think it rectifies, or at least help rectifies, the tone inconsistencies in some places between the two threads. Relieved to finally have a simple fix to the problem. At least I think it’s the fix. I’ll have to wait until I get those pages read by FWI to see if I’m really onto something. Also, I finally realized where a highly emotional scene needs to go. I had put it too early, I knew it, FWI told me so, but I couldn’t figure out where it needed to end up. But yesterday as I was playing around I finally realized where it needs to go, & it will come much later in the story than I’d ever thought. It just works perfectly. Yes, it will make an already emotional scene all the more gut-wrenching for my main character, but it’s so perfect.

So, tomorrow morning, I do my first official submission for this quarter. A little nervous even though I’m feeling good about my pages. Hoping for some good feedback, actually, I’m really looking for constructive feedback. So, fingers crossed.

Oh, and trying to make my mind up about NaNoWriMo this year. All the members of my writing group are doing it, as are some other writing friends. I’m feeling the peer pressure. If I commit to it, my plan is to do the 50K working on my current work-in-progress. I do have another idea I want to start developing, but this project needs to be my focus if I’m going to meet my end-of-the-year deadline. Another 16 days to decide. We’ll see.