Holding Pattern

I’m in a holding pattern. I hate holding patterns.

I’m waiting for responses from editors, through my agent, for submissions. I suspect, having taken this long, that they will say no.

I’ve finished one other manuscript and am in the process of editing it. Now that I’ve finished the first draft, I’m kind of losing motivation for this part, since this is where I identify all the problems and try to fix them, without completely hating what I’ve written. Add in my suspicion that a rejection is coming very soon (see above), and the cloud of negativity grows. But providing I can get past it, I’d like to have the first round of edits complete within the month so I can send it to one of my critique partners. She’ll read it for plot—does it make sense, is there a story arc/character arc, etc., is the tension sustained throughout. And then I’ll fix all the mistakes she identifies.

In the meantime, I’m also working on a second manuscript. I wrote 54,000 words and got stuck. This is the one I started on one of the college visits my daughter and I went to. While she was sitting in the hotel room doing homework, I started writing. 5,000 words later and I wanted to keep going. So I did. Until I got stuck. I met with my critique partner last week and she did a great job unsticking me. But that means I have to rewrite those 54,000 words. I’m going through from the beginning and trying to do that now, with the goal of getting it in decent shape to do serious writing on it in February.

February is my writing chapter’s novel-writing month. We aim to each write 30,000 in a month. It breaks down to a little more than 1,000 words a day, so it’s totally doable as long as the stars align and no one has a crisis. If I can get my edits done this month, I can move forward next month and hopefully reach the goal.

And therefore, this month is a holding pattern. Setting everything up for next month, without actually taking big strides forward. Patience has never been my strong suit, but I’m trying. And that’s about the best I can do right now.