43,000 Words

43,000 words and counting. The aim is to be done at 100,000 words.

What? I'm talking about the editing / rewrite of my first novel. It's been just a little over a month since I've started and I'm almost halfway. Not bad. Not bad. I'm still worried about meeting my deadline beginning of August. Why? In another 20 pages or so, the rewrite becomes extensive. I'm pretty much throwing out what's there and writing from scratch. Yikes! Makes me nervous as it will slow me up, but it has to be done.

Also making me nervous is PMO opening next weekend for the season. Until end of September, every weekend is packed. Husband says he's getting me a netbook for our upcoming anniversary [16 years, wow] so I can work when visiting my family this June and when I'm up at the observatory.

Editing / rewriting still feels like slogging through mud, but I keep at it. I won't stop until I am done. I'm deteremined.

I registered for the conference, made the hotel reservation and committed to the four one-on-one pitches. If novel#1 isn't competely done, I should be close. Very close. Yet I still feel the need to keep the pressure on myself and keep the momentum rolling forward.

Started on my homework - reading clients of the agents I'll be meeting with, working on pefecting my synopsis, trying to think up a hookline [I suck at it, got nothing ... but Arthur Dent says, "Don't Panic"], and honing my pitch. I got some novels on cd so I can listen while driving back and forth to the observatory. Makes that hour commute more productive. My palms are permanently clammy it seems. That deadline looms like my main character in novel#3. He's not a nice guy. A definite bad boy. So working with men all summer will help me out when I start on the writing. There's some research I have to do before starting, too. It'd be cool if I bumped into those weird lights again [See, my short story 'Beacons' for reference - http://www.mpaxauthor.com/ under M. Pax Works]. They'll be featured again in novel#3.

Finished the rough draft of my tumbleweed short for a sci-fi anthology yesterday. It needs a lot of spit and polish. Editing be my life. Until sometime in the fall, I don't have time for much else. Yet I am determined to get some more subs out by the end of this week.

By fall I should have two polished novels goint out to agents. Then I can get back to writing shorts and start on novel#3. If the first two come up empty, #3 may be the charm.

Whatever your dream: Never give up, never surrender.