A for Effort?

There are two big reasons I've been so LAGGY on my blog lately, so I figured I'd update you on one of them. Some of you may know I'm an aspiring author--some of you might not. My chosen genre is urban fantasy. I wrote a book years ago, and it was horrible. (Which I am not saying for pity--it was truly really awful.) Anyhow, I then rewrote it--and rewrote it again.

Then my brother died. After that, I wrote in a tricky ending, which everyone hated. (Everyone but me, and I'm the one who counts!) So, I decided instead of cutting the part of the story I liked, I'd make it bigger--show those readers WHY I liked that part...

I rewrote it another dozen times or so--sometimes small edits, sometimes large. Then at another famous author's advice, I gave up on that project and wrote a second novel. I realized that second novel was also crap.

I went back to the first one again--this time rewriting the story line entirely. I went to a real writer's conference in New York and stayed with my friend Chase. The agents there didn't like my second novel. They said my query letters sucked, which I now realize is correct. BUT, they liked my pages for the first novel.

I was reading a book on my Kindle in February of this year and saw it was by a small press--BelleBridge Books. I looked them up and discovered they accepted unrepresented partial manuscripts--hot dog. On a lark, I sent mine. I mean, at this point it had to be in pretty good shape, right? I'd only re-written it about 40 times.

Months passed. I'd given up on books one and two and had the first chapter of Book Three almost finished when... I got an email. It was from BelleBridge. They'd finally read my partial. It sucked, but they actually liked my characters and story line and thought my writing had some glimmer of hope. They recommended some extensive changes and said they'd like to see a full manuscript if I made them.

So, folks, I ignored the negative, brushed off my "promising" manuscript and started reading. To my horror, I realized it was Bad. REALLY BAD. Like CAPITAL LETTERS, BOLD FACED BAD. I read their recommended book. Then I read it again, taking notes. Then I began a wholesale rewrite--as in I cut at least 50% of the words and then built the darn book back up to the same number of words again. Then I rewrote those passages and then I went through and edited. I also had to write a 15 page synopsis.

I am writing this now to tell you that although this project has sucked up every minute of my free time now for six weeks, and some of my non-free time, IT'S DONE! I sent my manuscript in to the publisher not 3 hours ago.

Now it's time for the prayers. Let's face it--even with 50 rewrites, the odds are still against me. And even if they sign me, it will probably be for less than $2,000, which works out to about, oh, $0.02 an hour.

In spite of all that, I am still smiling and hopeful. Maybe the publishing game hasn't beat the optimist out of me yet. :-)