Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.
With Revision Xibalba (RX) starting next week, I worked on finishing character details last week. I wrote up some nice backstory for all the main characters I wanted to consider. Although I didn’t finish the key backstory/event for Charlie and Sam, I did outline it all. I couldn’t get enthused about writing it carefully–as I would to share it publically–but I did want to capture the events. It does all come full circle, so it’s important that I know about it. I just didn’t feel like I needed to know it perfectly, although I reserve the right to come back and finish it later. I planned to give those snippets away eventually.
It’s time to clean my desk, figuratively and literally. If you have anything you want me to read, this is a good week. Once I’m head down, nose to the grindstone, it may take several weeks of snippets of reading time instead of a long dedicated time. I’m out of books, so I shouldn’t be tempted there, unless I buy new ones. (Always a possibility.) I have several TBR piles, but they’re all still packed in the garage.
I have a few short character notes I want to make, and I want to write up the synopsis. I want to treat this like a formal proposal and have query and synopsis in hand, although I’m not sending anything out yet. I want to get this next pass well started, and let the dust settle on the Letters queries/packages before starting a new round. One book in the query stage is hard enough to manage, let alone two. Likely, I won’t be in a position to query NSR until early 2009, but it would be sweet indeed if I wrapped up the revision and could send a few chapters to my brand new agent before Thanksgiving. One can dream, right????! Please don’t wake me up.
If I owe you a package, I’m going to try very, very hard to get it in the mail before RX.
This week is also significant in my writer’s journey, so I’ll be writing up a post celebrating my fifth birthday as a writer. My, the time does fly, even when it seems the slow slog will never end.