One bite at a time. That's what I need to remember. As I’ve said in my previous blog, unless I have another book, Waiting for Appa is a dead end, no matter how successful it gets. I've been procrastinating. I’ve been doing everything but working on my first book. Here are the issues:
1. It was almost 500 pages, and then I edited it down to ~350 pages.
2. The thought of editing and rewriting it makes me cringe.
3. I need to add more historical material (which will probably take it back up to 500+ pages) then edit it back down to ~350 pages.
4. The historical material I have to read is not pleasant, somewhat equivalent to Rape of Nanking material. Yikes.
So…, here I am. Procrastinating.
This is where I need to get into my project manager mode. With any project, I need to break it down to manageable, measurable, attainable pieces. Well, here’s the math (I’m being ambitious here).
1. If my goal is to write 20 “good” pages a week, that’ll take me 17 - 25 weeks.
2. But, a lot of what I have is pretty good (I did have an agent with this manuscript and it was read by editors at Random House, Penguin, Harper-Collins, Morrow, and a 5th one I can’t remember), so I think I can do better than 20 pages/week. None of them had the same reason for rejecting it. I wish they could have been more constructive. I don't mind being criticized, as long as it's constructive and I learn something from it (althought it hurts to see others tell me how ugly my beautiful, awesome baby is). Some of those comments still linger in my head.
3. So…, I could possibly have a “first draft” with the additional material in about 3 months.
Now, all I have to do is… WRITE.
On a side note, for now, I’m giving up on Borders. As much as I want to work with the book store chain (the only one in my town), I’m wasting too much time distracted and frustrated by the laborious and confusing process (more than the actual time I spend trying to resolve it). So, for now, I’ll be focusing my efforts on other book stores. I must move on to editing and rewriting my first book.
It is so much easier to "just write"...write what you're feeling, write about the images and story you've created in your head, write about what you are passionate about...rather than editing in material (especially historical material).
ReplyDeleteMy suggestion would be, in that project management mind frame, flip through the 350 pages and mark the specific areas that would benefit from the historical data and then research and insert it "one bite at a time".
No matter what...just write. If you think about it too much, you're likely to procrastinate even more. You can always revise down to 20 good pages per week. Good luck & thanks for all your inspiration.