The Year of the Agent

In 2008, my first and foremost goal is to 1) finish Pirouette and start shopping it around, and 2) find an agent.  I think this is totally doable, if I stick to my current pace which is roughly 20k a month.  I’m not sure how long it will take to get critted and to revise, but I’m hoping to have it done and ready to roll before the end of the year.  Course, that’s what I said last year.  Pffft.  But I want it to be the best it can possibly be, no matter how long it actually takes.

December 27, 2007, was the 1-year anniversary of the day I finished the first draft of Pirouette.  It weighed in at 399,915 words, and was the longest book evah.  And the most I’d ever written in one year.  In 2007, I wrote about 215k — still excellent, but with my wrist bad and the surgeries, it wasn’t as prolific.  S’ok.  It’s still 2 standard sized books.

Pirouette’s Rewrite of Doom is coming along.  It’s sitting at 95k, and prolly won’t be done in 120k as projected.  I’m tentatively projecting 150k, with the intention of trimming it down.  This draft is completely different but still retains a bit of what it was.  Very few elements stayed, and I’m glad for that–they were all cliches.  I’m on a quest to be different, to stand out from the crowd.  Vampire books I hear are harder to sell, and i don’t want anything that could potentially cause it to b rejected.  So.  Hence the changes.

This is year 3, by the way.  I started Pirouette in Nov. 2005 for NaNoWriMo. 

Another goal of mine is to get a normal, consistant writing schedule be it every other day, as I’ve been doing, three days a week, whatever.  I’m setting a low goal of 20k a month.  I am not, this time, setting wordcount goals.  I used to, back when I did 1k+ days and my wrist was fine.  It worked to keep me motivated and producing on a regular basis.  Now, I have to be careful of the wrist. I cannot lose another 2-3 months.  Cannot.  So I don’t really care how much I write per day (or per session) as long as it totals 20k or thereabouts at the end of the month.  A nice very doable goal.  20k a month gives me 240k a year — a nice clunk of words (almost 2.5 books).  Yeah.  So that is also my goal.

 Also want to try to work on Survivor, perhaps finish it in between the rewrite of doom and edits.  It is next in my queue.  Because I think it’s damned brilliant, and needs to be finished so I can start its Rewrite of Doom.  We shall see.

So those are my main goals.  I know I can get an agent, as long as I write like mad and make Pirouette the very best it can be.  And if I keep going the way I’m going, it should be done soon.  I plan on spending enough time on revisions/edits to really make it shine.  As long as that takes.

Yes.  I CAN do this.