Wednesday, December 4, 2013

It Only Took a Dozen Years

but I finally have the first complete draft of my historical. I can't believe I even had the audacity to start something so big when I couldn't even write a proper scene. I have Peggy (pictured below) to thank for teaching me all the basics and more. 

Sometimes I wonder what if I'd stuck with it, instead of working on shorts and a ton of nonfiction. Would it already be published by now? I honestly don't know. All I know that the path I took, concentrating on shorts, becoming a working writer, writing this story in fits and starts (not the ideal way to write a novel), somehow made me a better writer. I guess the 10,000 rule applies to everything. I still have a couple thousand to go.

I took a complete break from this book for about five years, while I worked on a contemporary novel (that one took 3 years to write, revise, and polish). When I placed 3rd in the novel category in the SCBWI Carolinas writing contest, I thought, oh, I could finish polishing in a few months. WRONG. The re-visioning/re-shaping itself took a year-and-half. The polishing took a couple of months. Finally it's ready for my beta fish readers. And my hope is that they enjoy the story so much, they lose sleep over it.

This is a huge accomplishment for me, folks. I finally have a chance to have these characters take up residence in other people's heads. Hee hee.

8 comments:

Leandra Wallace said...

Congrats! You did it! And I really like what you call your betas- cute!

Faith E. Hough said...

Hooray, huzzah and congratulations! You've worked so hard on this, and you're an inspiration.

Mirka Breen said...

This is one epic work I want to read, Vijaya.

Bish Denham said...

I'm working on it... You know me... slow, but steady. :)

Marcia said...

Beta-fish readers -- snork. :)

Vijaya said...

Thank you so much ladies!!! And God-willing, it will be published so that more than my betas will get to read it.

R. T. Freeman said...

Congratulations, Vijaya! Posts like this one fill me with admiration, but also with hope AND inspiration.

Vijaya said...

Thank you, RT. We are so blessed to have this writing life.