March Update: Moving Right Along

I had a productive month.

I have done All The Edits for Druid Wars except for a last copyedit/proofread. I also still need to polish the hell out of the first chapter or three to get it query ready. And I need to tweak my cover letter a little bit. But all of those things shouldn't take very long. I'm updating my agent query list so that by the end of this month, I should be ready to begin the query process. My top agent is still closed, though, so if I need to take some extra time, I can. I'm debating sending it off to one last beta reader even before the proofread to make sure I'm not missing anything. As kind of a final check. Even before I send it to my siblings.

Halfway through this whole process, I realized why it took me a year to dive into this. It's such an intensive process. I have to fully immerse myself in a world. I have to read and reread several times, look at it from every angle, and pick apart each scene and sometimes even sentence. It is hard work to edit a novel. It's even harder work to get a novel ready for querying. It's only the second book I've had to do this to. With MystWatch 2 and 3, I'm not going to do a line edit, a copy edit, and a proofread, as well as a crutch word pass. But those things need to be taken care of before I can send a book to an agent. Or, I suppose, if I were going to self-publish. Which, I've decided not to for the foreseeable future, so that's here nor there.

Anyway. A lot of the reason I dragged my feet on Druid Wars submission was because querying sucks. But it's also because I wasn't ready to breath, eat, and dream Druid Wars.

It's been different, though. With MystWatch, the more I read it, the more I love it. With Druid Wars, the more I read it, the less I love it. Rather than being discouraged by that, I'm actually heartened. Maybe querying won't be so brutal. I can take it less personally this time around. And as I mentioned, if I have to trunk this series, I will have fewer feelings about it.

That being said, I am not as fatigued as I'd expected to be after all that. And I'm not tired of the world. I even made some notes for book two. So I'm in a really good place with all that.

So now, of course, it's time to switch gears, and projects, to focus on finishing up my MystWatch trilogy. Time to edit book three. It took about four weeks over the course of two months to do about the same level of edits on Druid Wars that I want to get done on book three this month. And it's a longer book. So it may be tough to get it ready for beta readers before I hit the end of this quarter. But as long as I'm diligent, it should be close. Camp NaNo is next month, and I only need about 15k words to finish my current SP adventure, so I should have some time to finish it up, if I need.

One more month of editing, then I'll slide into a writing quarter. I'm nervous and excited. I've been thinking about Sally Prescott on and off the last month, so it'll be good to revisit her world soon.

In the meantime, I get to go back and visit all my MystWatch friends. I might even try to write the Shane short, since I did make a goal to write a short story each quarter. Although maybe I should consider writing a Druid Wars short. I decided which two I want to write. I don't necessarily have plots for both, though, so maybe it's better to wait. Also, there's no point in writing in-between-the-books shorts if the first book doesn't get picked up. I may anyway, just as an exercise, but I think my writing energies may be better spent focusing on other things.

At any rate. It's only been two months so far this year, but I'm happy with my pace and progress. Moving right along. Hopefully by the end of this month, MystWatch 3 will be ready for beta readers.