It has been quite a while since I last posted, four months for anyone counting, and while I have been very busy between my writing and my photography, I don’t really have a lot to report as far as updates to my novel go.
I officially started the querying process with my first novel, and have submitted it to a small number of agents. Across social media, I am reading that agents are receiving higher than normal submissions—partly, I am guessing, from lockdown—which means that the time to hear anything back is slightly longer than usual. I have trained myself to check my email once a day, which is a lot harder than it sounds. While I wait, I write, and I am now 31K words into book two.
The process for writing book two feels very different from book one, which I am presuming stems from the fact that I am more confident now as a writer (proof too, to me at least, that all the writing classes and courses I attended while writing book one, paid off.) I am much more relaxed this time around, and am not pondering over sentences and words the way I did on my first book. Book one taught me that a lot of the things I spent hours and days laboring over will likely be cut. In short, I am allowing my first draft to be just that… a first draft.
Since beginning book two, I have also thought of three other plots for novels. Two more psychological thrillers, and one women’s fiction/book club. If I could write as fast as I think, I’d have half a shelf full of completed novels already.
Well that’s my writing news for now. I’ll be back with another update in April, when perhaps I’ll have some news from the agents who currently have my query. Fingers and toes crossed.