Otherways- Fiction Fanatics

While I generally want to focus on the whole world of fiction, rather than just my own material, I am pretty excited about some upcoming progress and wanted to share that with everyone.

First, my novel Demonologist is finally at a publisher being reveiwed. While this is a long process, often taking six to twelve months, it is still progress.  Sending your work out is not unlike sending your kids off to school or camp for the first time, except that you  know more than 90 percent of the time you'll only be getting a rejection notice in return. I'll have to admit, the first one was hard. Now it's just part of the game, and I'm collecting them for that day when one of my novels hits the best seller list.

The first novel I ever completed, Drawn to Violence, is about halfway through the re-editing process, where it will be expanded to about 120,000 words from its original 85,000.  While word count isn't everything, it does let me tell a more involved story. This first effort I actually wrote primarily on my lunch breaks at work, just to prove to myself that it was something I could actually do. Doing it that way took the better part of a year, and by far the hardest thing was to keep myself from deciding it was all crap and just trashing it.

For the record, it was only mostly crap. It's been through three full edits before this extensive rewrite, and I think it's finally getting to be where I want it, for now at least.

I also have three short stories going out this week, and a third novel that is more than halfway through its rough draft. Besides this website and our farm website, I'll be managing and blogging for a third site. Having this much complete, I finally feel like a writer, rather than someone that happened to write a book.

Besides being a shameless plug, I wanted to take this moment to encourage those people whose voices hadn't yet found their way into print. Keep writing, keep editing, keep submitting. Don't listen to the voice in your head that tells you you aren't good enough. Keep writing, and reading, and you will become the writer you want to be. I'm sure of it.

Cheers,

Michelle