I’ve been hard at work polishing the novel this past week, and not sleeping well at all. Summer is in full swing, and I’m convinced the sun is trying to kill me in coordination with the humidity. It’s pretty out, but it also feels like I’m choking to death on the inside of an oven and I’m not a fan. Regardless, polishing Blood and Roses is going well enough, I’m mostly trimming excess words, clearing up a few plot holes (and believe you men, there’s quite a few!) So, let’s talk about that.
This is the first time I’ve ever gotten this close to finishing such an ambitious project. I’ve certainly tried before, I tried to make games a long time ago for example, but none of them really worked out. Between trying to finish college, working, and maintaining the social life I still had at the time, it felt impossible. However, this time it’s happening for real. I’m very excited to be at this point, but I’m also kind of excited for it to be ready and done and out of my hands. Polishing is something you don’t hear mentioned a lot when it comes to like writing classes or discussions on literature. No one talks about the quality of a novel’s polish, even if everyone is aware of that quality. You can just tell when a book isn’t all… correct, you know? When dialogue is a little clunky or the scene dressing is confusing, you can tell; and that’s all polish.
We’re about halfway through polishing B&R for a second time, and I’m going to do at least one more pass to ensure that the plot makes some damn sense. It’s important to do this a couple times because you miss things, for example, yesterday I noticed an important side character wasn’t introduced at all before he just showed up in a scene and Elle acted like she knew him already. That’s a pretty big plot hole. And would have been embarrassing if it had made it into the final manuscript. So I’ve got another plot analysis to do, then sort of go over everything and see how it all looks. If everything is satisfactory, it’s time for the scary part, actually putting it out into the world.
I won’t lie, I am exceptionally nervous about this, about sending my manuscript out, about trying to get a literary agent, while also making cold calls to publishers that accept them. It’s one thing to post free fanfiction online and have a few fans say you’re good, it’s another thing to walk up to a professional who has done this for years and not only claim “My book is good, wanna read?” but also claim “You should sell it, let’s make lots of money.” it feels a little bit pretentious, and the last thing I want to do is come off as a boastful and arrogant fool. But you’ve got to do it, you got to shoot your shot and I have to shoot mine. If I want to make writing my career, I’ve got to do it. It’s honestly terrifying.
There’s so much uncertainty around it too which I find really interesting. I was always under the assumption that the purpose of going with a professional publisher was for them to handle all the publishing, you know it’s kind of in the name. However apparently a lot of publishing houses don’t do marketing for you, which is fucking nuts. What do you mean you don’t do the marketing? Isn’t that the whole point? Isn’t the hard part getting the word out there? What do you even do then? Print the books? It’s all so uncertain, unclear, and a little bit intimidating to be honest. And it’s not like I would need to sell them any copies if I were to make an okay living off of self-publishing, I just want to try and go the traditional route, you know? I want to see if I can do it. Either way the book is coming out eventually, and I’m still hoping to finish the manuscript this month. Provided that the sun lets me.
So that’s where Blood and Roses is at, partially polished, with my heart and soul poured into it. The pacing is a little messy, the plot needs patching up, but I think it’s pretty good, and from what people tell me of my writing on AO3 and the snippets I share with fellow writers it’s quite good. So… let’s hope it goes well these next few months. I’m also hoping to share a bit more about the world and the characters as we build up to finishing the manuscript, not so much as pre-marketing but more so because I’ve been very tight-lipped about it yet whenever I talk about it people get excited to hear more.
So, expect that in the near future! Feel free to leave a comment if you’d like. Thank you for reading all the way to the end of this ramble.
Leave a Reply