Sorry I was such a downer on Tuesday, squiders. I’ve been doing some thinking. Bookstooge, on my last post, mentioned that I might have over-committed myself. And I laughed to myself and was like, no, no, everything is fine, I am operating within normal parameters.
But then I stopped and was like…but am I?
When I had the idea of working on my scifi horror revision around working on the submission materials for Book 1, the idea is that I would have waiting periods while I waited on feedback, and that the scifi horror novella was essentially ready to go with only a few tweaks.
But let’s look at how things are actually breaking down.
The scifi horror novella is actually in pretty bad shape. In my memory it was essentially ready to go, because it was the first thing I ran through the critique marathon that didn’t get torn to shreds. But in actuality it has basic worldbuilding and character background issues, and the whole end of the story is not working.
Aside from just sitting down and hammering out the worldbuilding/character stuff (which isn’t necessarily hard, just needs to be done) I need to at least rearrange the whole second half, if not throw part of it out and rework.
My endings are not normally a problem, so this may take longer than normal while I work through how best to process this.
In my head, I was going to start the revision in November, be done by early January, and have stuff ready for both the winter critique marathon and my in-person critique group. Then by mid-March I could be done with the whole revision process and start submitting it.
Obviously this has not happened. It’s mid-February, the actual revision part hasn’t even started because I’m still figuring out everything that needs fixing, and meanwhile my submission stuff ALSO isn’t getting anywhere because I’m letting the revision take most of my mental fortitude.
So, yeah, maybe I am over-committing myself.
Or at least, what I’m doing isn’t working, and it’s always good to occasionally look at your progress and process and whether or not it’s helping you meet your goals. It’s okay to change, after all.
I do think there was a peer pressure aspect to it as well, to have stuff ready for the critique marathon and my in-person group. But I’ve missed the majority of the marathon at this point, and I let the in-person group know that I won’t have anything ready.
I’m going to focus on my submission materials until they’re ready to go, and then I can give both projects the attention they need, and maybe I won’t feel so overwhelmed about the whole thing.
See you next week, squiders!
