Revisionist Histfic

And so it came to pass that, for lack of readers on the first go round and with a bit of consideration, I have almost against my own will begun another pass at the manuscript.  This will not be so profound as the last time, but then again – it depends upon definitions.  Profoundity may not be measured in volume, but in net effect, and some of the small changes already made have altered the work.

It just depresses me.  There are times I tell myself it’s freeing, admitting just how long I have worked on Ax now.  Mostly, though, it has become oppressive.  All writers have excuses, all of us have disappointments.  But my first JRW conference was almost nine years ago now.  It was within three months or so of that I began in earnest.  So this work has gone on for something over eight years.  Three jobs.  The entire lifetime of my younger niece.  If I told her I’d been working on a book for that long she’d dismiss me outright, and it’s not like the publishing industry would be much more impressed.  I know that.  Deadlines aren’t set around concerns about pet care, or full time jobs that have nothing to do with getting a book researched, written, revised.

If I admitted precisely how long the list of agents is, I have actually queried in the over a year and half since the first time I thought I had finished the manuscript, I’d probably be dismissed as a dilettante, wasting time and not truly dedicated.

Fortunately, I don’t in fact know exactly how many it is.  I have an Excel spreadsheet, yes, but I deleted quite a number of agents after the first round of queries/before the Great Revision, so I’d be unable to pin down totals with any degree of honesty.  It’s not as many as I’d like to let on … and periods of “Oh I live in a doggy toilet” or the various other stresses of 2012 led me to far-too-*long* periods of inactivity in my stewardship of my own work.

And here I am, going back into reverse, the “revised” manuscript already out in various states of snippet-ery to agents who, not at all surprisingly I guess, aren’t wetting themselves to get their hands on more.  Sigh.

The good news is that the past two or three weeks have at least had me regularly engaged.  I was investigating whether to do another revision, even as I was getting out a few queries … and, in the end, I have to be honest with *myself* now and do the right thing.  It’s helpful that I don’t actually resent getting back on the old horse.

I just worry that I’ve let the poor thing’s journey get longer than it should have been.

Probably not unique, and who wants to read a blog about a continually unpublished author having second thoughts.

Y’all are reading the blog of an author still *waiting* to be published.  Be patient with me, and we’ll get Ax out there.

And then it’ll be time for me to start sighing here and there about the second novel – in between posts about how cute my animals are.