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The Writing Vacation

The wonderful thing about the job I currently have as opposed to the job I used to have at the law firm, is that in my current job, I have my weekends free. Not every single weekend, but 99% of them. At the law firm, it was more like 99% of my weekends I ended up having to work, at least part of the time. I'm not complaining - I was well-compensated for my time - but it was well worth the pay cut to have two entire days off in a row.

This weekend, I didn't do anything but clean my house and write. Clean and write, write and clean. (I can't just write for an entire two days - I need cleaning time to think about things.) The result of this abundant time?

I finished the revision of my novel. whoopee!

I finished the line edit of the first three chapters of the novel (which is different from a revision in my mind - the line edit is the clean-up stage, when I print it out and make sure to get all the unnecessary passive voice and lame verbal tags out of it. It takes, like, 15 minutes per chapter.)

I finished a draft of the query letter. Of course, the query needs to be personalized for each agent, but I've got the basic format done so that it can be tweaked for each send.

I finished my first stage of research on agents. Can I just say that I cannot imagine how difficult it used to be to submit queries without the internet? Between Publisher's Marketplace and AgentQuery.com and Google and about a billion blogs, it's so much easier to research agents and know exactly how they want to be approached. It's like when I wrote my masters thesis on my personal computer and realized about halfway through that all of my professors had actually typed their theses. Like, on typewriters! Crazy.

I started querying my novel. eeeee! I know! It's so exciting and nerve wracking. I want to laugh with glee and throw up at the same time. Now I'm afraid to check my email, even though it's a Sunday night and I'm pretty sure that no agent's going to take time out of their weekend to reject me. They're happy to wait for Monday. :)

I started two new projects. I know I sound like a total overachiever right now, but let me explain. The first project I started is the sequel for the novel I'm querying now, but the problem with that, of course, is that what if the first one doesn't sell? It's not like the sequel's going to be sold without the first one. So I also started a totally new project (the one I mentioned here), unrelated to the first novel, just to hedge my bets. It's so strange to be at the beginning again, breaking new ground, after spending so much time revising and revising. I'm in uncharted waters. It's exhilarating!

And now I have to go back to work for an entire FIVE DAYS, instead of spending all my time writing and thinking about writing. At least they have good coffee there.
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