Week 85 – Easter eggs and egging on!

It being the Easter bank holiday long weekend here, my writing has taken a bit of a back seat to lots of family time – including the traditional Easter Egg hunt today.  We even had a period of actual sunshine in which to hide the eggs!

However, three important writing-related things have happened in the last few days that have made me feel pretty happy this week.

Firstly, I got my novel back from the second round of external proofreading.  I’ve gone through some of the notes but have to sit down and work through it all in the next couple of days – mostly it’s around a bit of over-emphasis where certain points are a little laboured.  I will look and decide – it’s a fine line between exploring a character’s foibles and being repetitive, and I need to make sure I fall on the right side of it!  Still, the notes show vast sections where no further issues have been raised so that’s a brilliant response, as far as I’m concerned.

The second is that I have completed my chapter plan for the third novel. I have in mind it’s set it in 1950’s USA but I’m trying to decide if I can make it less specific than that – name a town, and not provide other details. The reason for this is that it could be any small town, anywhere, at that sort of time – and I want it to have that feel. If you’ve ever seen Edward Scissorhands, that might help you envision it: a kind of anytown feeling.

The third is I have finally decided on my initial agent approach.  I want to choose three for the first round: any more and it might become unmanageable in terms of printing and postage, let alone waiting for responses – but making a definite decision is a big step for me.

I’m feeling very encouraged by feedback from others and from my own endeavours.  It’s the agent part that’s really difficult, much more so than I’d imagined: I’m nervous, and excited, and frustrated all in one big bubble of fizzy lightheadedness.  So much rests on choosing well, and yet this is only stage two of my novel’s journey (stage one being write something I can send off!) – and if it stumbles here I’ll be back to the drawing board.

But all the time I get support from people whose opinions I trust, I’ll keep going.  At this point, even if no agent is interested, I feel confident that it’s good enough for an audience and therefore good enough to self-publish.  That’s a huge change for me.

I’m going to leave it there for today so I can return to my chocolate eggs!

Happy writing,

EJ

🙂

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