…on the finishing of novels

August 20, 2009 at 2:19 pm (Inanities) (contest, editing, exhaustion, novel, pale queen's courtyard, personal, writing)

I disappeared, recently, from the happy world of the ‘social’ and ‘rested’, in preparation for a novel submission contest run by Tor Books in the UK.

It was something of a stroke of serendipity; a poster I much enjoy over at rpg.net (a forum I much enjoy!)  happened across a mention of this contest in a UK sci fi mag, and decided to share his discovery with the world at large. At the time – perhaps midway through July – I had somewhere between 80k and 90k words of my own novel, many of them raw, ugly, scattered and not altogether useful.

But I didn’t want to let this opportunity pass me by, and so I revved my mental engine and got to work.  The first step: finishing a novel whose momentum I’d largely lost. Two weeks and 30k words later, I fell upon my poor manuscript with scalpel and chainsaw, working feverishly to get everything in place for the August 20th final deadline (today, as it happens!).

And, with the help of my lovely Daena, I hit that deadline. Pale Queen’s Courtyard is done, at long last, and I’m happy with the result. My initial submission – three chapters and a synopsis – was made two weeks ago, and now I wait. If I have the good fortune of shortlist candidacy, I’ll know by September 10th. If I don’t, I expect I’ll start querying agents shortly.

So wish me luck, indifferent world at large.