rough draft

atthequillsmercy

Giving up: Knowing When To Throw In The Towel

I have finished the rough draft for one anthology entry and I’m 7 written pages into the second. However, I have come to realize there is no way I will get to finish both of them in time to submit. They are both due on the 24th, one is 1,200 words and needs to be 5,000 and the other needs to be 10,000 and I am no where near that.

So, I give up.

I will write both but instead of submitting two crappy manuscripts which will absolutely get rejected, I can focus on the short one, get it all perty like, and finish the other one at my leisure. And who knows? Maybe the stars will align and I will finish both to submission quality. And maybe the unicorns who live in my closet will cry tears of liquid silver and I will sell it to pay off my mortgage. :p

It is a pretty big closet…

This is a hard lesson for me to learn and it’s one I’ve had to learn more than once: You can’t do EVERYTHING, and you don’t HAVE to. Anything I don’t finish by the deadline, I can polish myself and put together as an anthology. Just because I can’t have them all traditionally published doesn’t mean they will languish unread on my flash drive. Some will even be on my site, as well. ^_^

Are you excited? Because I am. Excited and proud at getting so much done, even if it isn’t all on time. 😉

atthequillsmercy

Serious case of the “Now What.”

Break out the party cannon, the rough draft of Greenhouse is done! >D Of course there is the nut busting, fun, necessary process of proofreading before I can call the project completed and start posting preview chapters on my site. But, in addition to fighting this evil sickness that’s been going around my home AND work, I have been plagued with a case of post-completion confusion I have dubbed The Now What’s.

I can’t be alone in that feeling; the elation of typing “The End” fades and despite the pile of other projects you (may) have to jump on, you sit there at your computer or with the notebook in your lap with a cartoonish question mark floating above your head. For a moment, you panic. You don’t have the next book ready to start in your brain meats yet, you know you have to edit but editing is NOT the same as the generous flow of new prose. Going through the editing process harms you further because you find all those typos that make you believe you weren’t typing so much as mashing your appendages against the keyboard. Also, I have to admit, I have places in the rough manuscript which look like this:

Genius words in a fabulous scene. More genius words. Yet even more.

**Add more detail here**

The brilliance continues.

Yes, the “completed” draft is riddled with “add more here” notations like you wouldn’t believe. But the story is there.

As to the Now What’s, how did I get over it, you ask? I didn’t write for a night. I completed the rough draft on Monday and that night I continued my goal to finish my 100 books in a year by parking it on some propped up pillows, reading this trashy romance novel (does WONDERS for clearing out the brain), and went to bed. Now, I’m rested and ready to go on the next thing!

Whatever that will be. XD