Making a Post Just to Make a Post

So it's been almost four years since I've made a post on this blog. Why? I don't know. I think part of the issue is that the older I get the less I care whether anyone knows how I feel about anything. I used to feel pretty sure that I was so wise that everyone would want to know my thoughts about...well...pretty much everything. I mean, all you have to do is look back through this blog to see that I wrote about pretty much anything I felt like writing about. And I had strong opinions about it all. 

That's not the case today. My opinions aren't as strong about most things, and I really don't care whether you know what my opinions are. 

So if that's how I feel, why am I writing now? I don't know. I don't even think about this blog most days. Haven't thought about it in months, if I'm being honest. But I clicked on an old article with my name in it and it included a link to this blog, and I clicked on it. And when I did, I didn't like that the last post I'd made was about a novel I was writing at the time. It seemed like an unfinished way to leave the blog, so I thought I'd write at least one more post. This one. 

So what happened with my novel? I finished it. I sent a query letter and the first few chapters to some 60 agents trying to get representation for it, and though I heard back from 3 agents who wanted to see the full novel, in the end, none of them said that it was what they were looking for. I hired a different agent to read my query letter and the first few chapters and suggest changes I could make to interest agents, and she gave me some ideas which I added to both the letter and the novel. Still, though, I couldn't find representation, so I decided to self-publish the novel. But then I decided that--if I were going to publish it myself--I wanted to revert some of the changes that I'd made at that agent's advice. So I started working on reverting SOME of those changes, and in the end, I finally just stopped working on it. I guess I need to be honest and say that I'm not interested in self-publishing. Self-publishing makes sense for non-fiction work where the author gives presentations to audiences and can sell the book at the presentations. Or in the case of my wife, who has self-published a biography of the man who started the museum where she works, that book can be sold in the gift shop of the museum. That makes sense. But I know if I self-publish a novel that I'm going to sell eight copies to friends and family who are going to buy the novel in order to avoid hurting my feelings. They probably won't even read it. And I'd rather just spare them having to spend the $20 for the book. 

When I told a friend what I just wrote above, she strongly encouraged me to follow through and self-publish. It wasn't just enough to have a rough draft of the novel, she said. I needed something finished and printed that my children and grandchildren could have after I was gone. But that's never going to work as motivation for me. I'm not worried what the world thinks about me after I'm going, or whether I'm remembered at all. I'll be dead. What do I care? 

Maybe I'll change my mind at some future date, but for now, I'm fine with the novel in the state it's in now.

And I'm also fine with this blog in the state it's in now that I've made this post. A part of me thinks I should just delete the blog entirely, or at least make it private. But naaah. Leave it up. Read it if you find it and you want to. Or don't read it. What do I care? 

Progress on my Novel: April 4

Oops. I forgot to write at the end of March with an update about my novel. That's because I'm focused on finishing it. At the start of March I guessed that by the end of the month I'd be finished with Part 2 and working on Part 3. I actually finished Part 2 on March 16 and as of today I am one chapter away from finishing the entire novel. I am currently at word 146,360 and am on page 471. That means that in the last 35 days I've written 161 pages.

Damn.

I really want the novel to be under 450 pages, though, and I'm hoping to actually get it under 425. So I have some more cutting to do. As things have turned out, though, a couple of plot points that I thought I would use in Part 3 became unnecessary. As such, a lot of the setup that I had done along the way can now be cut out. That should eliminate maybe 5 pages. But that still leaves another 15 or so (and preferably 40 or so) that I need to cut. That might be really, really hard.

Anyway, I'm getting back to writing now. If I don't finish today, I should finish tomorrow. Then I'll start the very serious work of editing, and after that I'll work on getting the thing published.

Which I have NO idea how to do.

Progress on my Novel: February 28

February has been an interesting month for my family. I don't really want to go into a ton of details in a public place like a blog, but I will say that three of the four of us were hit with the flu; it's been a rough month, especially the second half, and we're not all fully recovered even yet.

Despite that, I wrote throughout the month. When I had the flu, I still wrote my 1,000 words per day. Maybe it was a little obsessive to do so, but I felt I needed to get the words written every day.

Well, I didn't write 1,000 words every day. I finished Part One of the novel on February 5. Immediately after that, instead of writing, I spent almost a week revising and making major cuts to Part One. As I said last month, I realized my novel was getting too long, so I re-read all 286 pages (91,461 words), asking myself if I really needed that section of the novel, if I really needed that subplot. I then re-read Part One AGAIN, re-reading each sentence to see if there weren't a shorter way to write each (I was amazed, by the way, by the number of "that"'s I used that were entirely unnecessary. Not wrong, just not needed. 100's of them over the course of Part One. I'll highlight in red throughout this blog similar "that"'s that don't need to be there.). In the end, I cut Part One down to 253 pages and 81,699 words. I was thus able to cut about 11 percent of the novel out. I'm still a little worried, though, as I think Part One is going to be about half of the novel, and I'm really trying to keep the novel under 500 pages. Way under 500 pages. I may have to cut again.

Some of the cuts were painful; one section in particular that I decided to abandon wholesale represented more than an entire day of writing. But I watched a video somewhere early in the month wich gave me a lot of hope. It was an audio only YouTube video that included all of the songs cut out of the final version of the Tony-award winning play Hamilton. There were some 20 minutes of songs cut out of the musical, and for the most part they were really, really good. But the play overall is better without them, and like this novel, would have been way too long with them. So I actually watched that video a couple of times, telling myself it was good to be reminded that just because a piece of writing was well written didn't mean it needed to be kept.

Anyway, as of today, I have written 317 pages and 99,241 words, and if I had to guess I'd say I'm somewhere between a third of the way and halfway through Part Two. I expect by the end of March to be finished with Part Two and working somewhere in Part Three, and if that works out, I should finish the novel by the end of April, which is about what I expected when I started.