A Writer's Notebook, Day Forty-Four

I managed to write 819 words in my twenty minutes tonight, which I am quite happy about.  First, it suggest that I am getting more used to this work and not wasting as much of the time while writing, and that I am learning to let the ideas roll out the way that they should.  I don't honestly think the story is good at this point, but I never intended it to be anything but background for something else, so I don't worry about it right now.  I'll see, as well, what happens as I keep at it, because at some point, I expect that things will shift if I keep on with this.

I was originally going to actually increaes the time I spend on the story tonight, but it is too much for me today.  It has been a crazy one, and I won't get into it, but to say that tomorrow will be better as I will be back at home after a few nights stuck away due to unexpected troubles with my home.  That I wrote so quickly today, though, might suggest that I can do more when I am less in the way.  I am barely able to keep my mind going, but it is racing as a result, which is a contradiction, I know, but it seems to be true anyhow. 

In other arenas, I am working on the query for my novel.  This is what I have written up so far, but it, I know, too long and I don't know that I have made it something an agent would find intriguing: Complete at 81,620 words, W/R is a literary novel exploring the relationship between reader and writer and the worlds they create to inhabit together. After repeatedly failing to complete his work, a writer tries imagining the book completed, in the reader’s hands. Speaking to that reader as a character within the book, he describes the strange journey that led him to tell this story: a series of dream encounters with a mysterious figure identified only by his yellow jacket, an emissary of sorts who charges the writer with the task of creating this novel. 

As the writer is pulled further into the story, and into the strange dream-world the man in the yellow jacket inhabits, even the real world becomes strange and warped. It becomes clear that the only escape is to complete the book, but the man in the yellow jacket clearly has his own reasons for pursuing the book’s completion. It is only natural that the reader would question the sanity of such thinking, but what if the writer is correct that merely by starting to read, you have already opened up your own mind to the same forces that compel the book’s creation? And what happens if the book remains unfinished?

Anyhow, I signed up for Manuscript Academy and am planning to do a query consultation, so that will help.  I am sure it is, as I said, a bit long, but the point is to find out how to perfect that pitch. 

I actually brought the first chapter in to my workshop today, and I was happy with the response to it.  The work is strange, so it made me happy that the class seemed to really have gotten into it and to have a lot of positive responses.  Their were some suggestions, but I am mostly just glad of the positive reception.