Handing it Over

Good news! I finished the first edit of my novel! It wasn't as dreadful of a process as I thought it would be and I think my manuscript is in a much, much better place. And I discovered something about myself that was a bit of a surprise: I like to cut things. I was like an animal, slicing and dicing. I got rid of one of my favorite scenes in the whole novel because I found out it just didn't serve a good enough purpose. And I actually thought it was fun to select all and press delete (of course I have a cut file so it wasn't like it was gone forever).

Now, as they say, when you love something, set it free. Love is probably not the correct word but at this point, I'm so brain dead it's the only cliche I can think of. So I'm about to send out the book to some fresh eyes for critique before I begin querying agents.

I workshopped the first 150 pages of my novel, but I stopped at that point for a variety of reasons. My formal workshop simply ended its run and my writing group sadly fizzled after the honeymoon wore off and a few attempts to meet up failed. I did not actively try and keep these connections because my workshops and critique groups were taking up a lot of my writing time. There was a point where I was involved in about 25 other people's novels and I basically got workshop burnout. It's unfortunate, because I lost most of the valuable connections I had made with other writers. If I had to do it over again I probably would have tried to stick to 1 or 2 critique partners so that writing and critiquing could be of equal priority.

I have a few writers who are willing to read my work so I'm grateful for that, but I'm thinking I'd like to reconnect with some of the writer friends I've since lost. After all, they were there from the beginning of this silly little thing. I wonder if some of them would like to pick up where we left off.

We shall see...

In the meantime, I wonder what other people will see in my novel that I simply couldn't. After all, this whole 'I write, you read' thang is truly what it's all about, right? Heeeeere weeeeee gooooooooo!!!!!!