Fresh Look

I have loathed my wip. Last year, when I'd been working on it for a while, and agents had been rejecting it right and left, I revised and revised until the words just melted into one molten mass of Sucks Rocks. Every revision seemed to drag it further into the abyss of Suckiness.

Now, returning to it after ten months hiatus for a fresh look, I was mildly surprised upon reading it. I enjoyed reading it. Hey! My wip improved while I wasn't looking! How did that happen?

Were the revisions worth it? Yes and no.

In some ways, I think the original story as I conceived it -- all one book -- was solid. It was 180,000 words, however. Way too long to have a chance at publication. The excess might have been all fat, but I didn't (and still don't) think so. It had to be that long because of the number of characters, the amount of world building, and the number of plotlines. In early revisions, I cut it down to 140,000 words, and frankly, eviscerated it. There's a reason fantasy stories run in series.

On the other hand, when I turned the story into a series, I had to add characters and plotlines, or it would have been too thin. I've done that. The world is richer now. I've invested more in my characters. The first book is complete, and the other books in the series are substantially outlined. All have sequences of scenes already written. The end of the series is written.

I've spent ten years working on this series. True, that includes periods like the last ten months, where I did no work on the project. It also includes periods where I wrote steadily, four to fourteen hours a day, every day, for years in a row.

Maybe that was a mistake. One of the new agents I queried works at an agency I have queried before. I envisioned the experienced agent warning the new agent, "That old chestnut is still floating around? That loser needs to give it a rest. Write something new already, you no-hit-wonder." (This is a conceit, of course, since I doubt my query sparked any discussion or recognition whatsoever. I'm sure the new agent is perfectly capable of rejecting projects on her own!)

I do, in fact, have other projects and other ideas. So why don't I just put this wip in a drawer and stop harassing innocent agents with it? Why did I revise & query yet again?

I still like the story. I still love my characters. I still think their tale is worth telling. And frankly, there is so much world-building involved in a good fantasy epic, it's incredibly difficult to walk away from a world I know so intimately.

Oh, yeah, and I'm an obsessive lunatic who still imagines I can perfect this book.