So this month is National Novel Writing Month in which I am not participating. Saturday was the Ozarks Romance Writers' meeting and several of those members were participating, so I had some writing envy. I decided I needed to love the one I'm with and work on my own already in progress novel.
I have waffled between rewriting it from third person or sticking with the first person point of view. Why I didn't just do that from the beginning I can not explain. Honestly, I didn't think it would really matter what point of view I used. I've read plenty of paranormal romances from both viewpoints.
Harelequin is probably the most new writer friendly publisher. Probably because they publish so many romances each much. Lots of awesome writers have cut their teeth in serial romance. In fact, so writer and submission friendly is Harlequin that they are having a free online conference all this week specifically on the how to's of writing romance. You can check it out at So You Think You Can Write if you are interested.
Last night I was trying to check out all of the events and podcasts from the first day and the main editor that accepts submissions for Harlequin Nocturne (the paranormal romance editor) had a podcast. She seemed great and gave good advice but also dropped a couple of bombshells. First, the word count for Harlequin Nocturne just got raised from 70,000 to 80-85,000. Yeah, I have 51,858 now. I've got some work to do.
Secondly, at the very end of the podcast she just happened to mention that submissions needed to be in third person point of view. Nowhere on the submission guidelines did it say that. Maybe it was supposed to assumed. Maybe I just didn't know what I didn't know what I didn't know. Now I know.
So my dilemma has been resolved for me. I have to rewrite it.
I guess the hardest part is committing to a course of action. Once there's a solid and clear plan, it's usually easier to proceed, right? It's good to have a plan.
So after all that waffling and hoping to take the easy way out, now I know, as with most of the things in life, there is no easy way out.
Bryon's pretty sure I'm windy enough to make it all work out. He's probably right. I just need someone to offer up their lake home to me for a long weekend so I can work on it without distraction. Either that or I'm going to have to check myself into a hotel.
Either way ... I got this.
I totally a sympathsize with you on rewrites. When I wrote the first draft of The Treasure Hunter's Lady, it was set in Australia. There's not an agent alive (well, maybe somewhere) that would touch it set there. The one I pitch to in person was very adamant that there's not place for a foreign-set novel in our country, even if it is of the steampunk/fantasy persuasion.
ReplyDeleteI spent two or three months revising it to fit into America, which meant I had to change the premise and research different legends. Somehow it wound up with Native Americans in it. Total shocker. But in the end it was worth it, so even though you've got some work ahead of you, I know you can do it!