A Minor Milestone
Tonight, I finished the first major rewrite of my first [unpublished] novel. For those just tuning in, it's a fantasy genre thing, so if that's not your boat, then you can just ignore this post. I like the fantasy genre (plus, it's important to note that I'm one of those annoying buttheads who thinks that most of what passes for "science-fiction" these days is merely fantasy with an extra helping of techno-babble to fool the rubes), so I've been writing a fantasy. Next, I might try my hand at something more contemporary. But first, I have this huge pile of unread books that have been waiting for this milestone...
This novel has been in the works for a long time, but it spent a lot of that time sitting untouched on the shelf because I wasn't sufficiently motivated to finish it. The first draft has been sitting on my hard drive since I sent it around to a select group of friends, most of whom reacted with variations on "it's kinda interesting, but it's full of problems— here let me show you them!" Some of that was useful, so I took the plunge and dove into a full rewrite from the ground up.
The second draft is quite a bit different from the first. It still has most of the same characters, and the story bears a strong resemblance to the one in the first draft, but there are a lot of major departures. The world is more than a little different. I think the second draft is much better plotted. The characters are stronger, too, I think. All in all, I'm not terribly ashamed of this draft.
I will be giving it another quick pass in the next couple of days, looking for howling discontinuities and other vermin. Then, I will be fulfilling my promise to Gee by sending off query letters to the appropriate literary agents. (She won't believe it's unpublishable until I collect the rejection slips that prove it. I suppose that's what spouses are supposed to do, but it still feels weird. I've never been terribly concerned over whether a publisher ever develops an interest in it. I just wanted it to be of commercial quality. I think I've succeeded at that, whether a publisher ever makes an offer or not.)
Those of you who are on my LiveJournal friend's list (editors and agents excluded): if you're interested in reading it, send me an email or post a comment in the LJ version of this thread, and I'll add you to the group I'll be using to post the chapters.
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