Sunday, August 13, 2006

I am so lame...

Sigh... so sorry about my absense. I wish I had a good excuse but no. Sure I've been working, sure I've been reading tons. Writing? Not enough. Plotting? Eh, maybe enough.

See, I've figured something out about my plot, something new that I can't believe I'd missed before. But this leaves me in a conundrum. Right now I have two partial requests from agents (one from before and another from the conference). These are both top top agents that I would LOVE to be associated with. So I don't want to screw up.

I had my partial all ready to go and then Diana P. sent back her thoughts (huge thanks to her for critiquing my partial when she had so much on her plate!!) and they were dead on. I mean things that only an outsider would really pick up on. Then another writer critiqued my work and came up with the same conclusions. All pointing to the same issue: I've started in the wrong place.

Of course, I'd already chopped off chapter 1 once, and intuitively I knew that these two women's critiques were dead on. So here we went again: more chopping. Now I've rearranged the first three chapters, cut some, added some and am close to being done. Big yea! But...

Now I'm afraid of sending the partial off without finishing up the whole thing. I was so close to having it finished before but then went back and read through and... well... I had to ask "who cares?" I was missing some umph, some drive. For the last few weeks I've been pondering, wondering, worrying, stressing, not writing.

And finally, just last week I got the idea. I had to roll it around a bit, taste the idea and now I know exactly how it fits in.

But it does mean some big rewrites. Like, there's a whole new plot line that has to be added and it's a major driving plot line.

So what are y'all's thoughts? Do I send the partial off, with the chance that there might be a full request with no full to send? Or do I wait, write the full, and then send the partial off?

The one thing I know for sure: I've been very disappointed with out easy it has been to turn my back on everything. Blogging, writing... everything. Sigh...

2 comments:

Brenda Oig said...

Hi Carrie, Welcome back. :-) Honestly, I would wait to send out the partial until the full is finished. When you're a debut author, I think you want to make sure your work is the best it can be before starting anything. It has to be tough to have a request for a partial and not know what to do, but in the long run I think it's better. I've read this advice over and over again and I think it's good. Just my opinion. :-)

TJ Brown said...

I would wait as well. Easier said then done though. I am the impatient sort myself.

Glad to see you back. And don't be so hard on yourself. Stuff happens. You just have to get back in the saddle again.
Teri