I fell slightly short of my 15,000-words-on-the-new-novel goal for last month, but only because I became sort of consumed by yet another thorough revision of the novel that was my graduate thesis for the first two or three weeks of the month. I got back to work on the new novel only after I was able to consider the older one finished (once again). However, I have decided that I absolutely MUST set the old novel aside so that I can actually get this current draft of the new one finished. I know I’ve said that before, but this time I really, really, honestly mean it. I CANNOT continue to rework old pieces forever, or else I will never get anything new completed.
All that said, I did still get a fair amount done on the new novel, and I fully expect to be able to meet my overall goal of having this new draft finished by the end of the summer. I’m going to shoot for around 1,000 words a day for this month, which should put me at around 60,000 words by the end of the month, with 30,000 more (give or take) to go. I’d like to have a really solid working draft done by the beginning of the next school year so that I can just focus on revision when I start to get really busy with teaching again.
As far as agent hunting goes, I think I’m going to give it a rest for now. I’ve read some articles lately that reminded me how difficult it is to find an agent through querying alone. While there are some agents who take the slush pile seriously, most agent interviews I’ve read (and I’ve read quite a few over the years) suggest that agents only very rarely offer representation to writers that come to them through the slush pile. The best way to get an agent is to network your little pants off and get referred by someone the agent already does business with, but short of that, you can meet agents at conferences (if you can afford to go) or wait for agents to find you (and yes, agents really do read lit journals looking for fresh blood, so a perfectly good plan of action is to just get published in as many journals as you can and hope that somebody who can help you will read it and like what he or she sees).
My current plan of attack is to try to get more of my work online, so instead of hunting for an agent, I’m going to try to submit to some online journals this month and see if I can build up more of a web presence for myself.
My goals for July:
- 30,000 words or more on current novel
- 10 submissions
