Done with School

Well, today was the last day of classes. I survived another semester. Almost, anyway. I still have 2 exams and 2 papers, by the 20th. After that, though, I'm free until January 8. Except for the fact that I may have a job over winter break. In which case, my writing will likely get neglected again.

I can sit down and force myself to write every day, no problem. I'm not saying that the quality of it is very good. Most of it's pretty crappy, to be honest. But first drafts are supposed to be, which is something that took me a long time to learn. I can write crap, because I know that it'll all get edited into something that doesn't resemble verbal vomit.

Therein lies the problem, though. If I tell myself that I have to edit a part of it everyday, or that I have to sit down for half an hour, or an hour, and edit...I'll never get it done. It's not that I don't think my stuff needs a good hard edit, because I guarantee that it does. I've got a couple glaring plot inconsistencies in my draft, which has adopted a new title "a mortal god", which I reeaaally like. But the plot inconsistencies need to be worked out. I've also got a list of new scenes which I intended to put in the first time, but they never got in.

Oh, and I did something silly. I sent off a query letter, because I was proud of my hook. Of course, the danger is if they like it and want to see the first couple of chapters. Fortunately, the first couple chapters are (I think) some of the best in the book, so hopefully IF the agent likes the query then I'll have enough time to put the thing through a proper edit. I've always worked better under pressure, and yes I KNOW this is a bad idea. But I console myself with the thought that I sent out 11 (something like that) queries over the summer, and got a uniformly negative response. So maybe this agent will hate it as well. Hurrah.