The Writing Life

I know I said this last year as well, but this IS the year I'm going to get published and in order to get published I have to submit something.  I did submit a few things last year, but in late November and early December so even if any of that finds its way into publication it won't be for a while.

I have finished the rewrite on Maggy, which is now The Narcissist, but that doesn't mean I'm through editing.  When you've worked on a book for twenty years or so, it's hard to come to the absolute end point with it unless someone else takes it away from you.  The rewrite I just finished was a drastic reworking of the material into a new form.  The whole story is now told as if it were being remembered in present time and in therapy, so there are millions of tense changes.  I will be editing to find missed tense changes.

I've been doing the last two hundred pages of rewrite on Word.  I had an unfortunate accident on Blogger.  I wrote a whole new chapter and was delighted with it.  The whole chapter was dialogue.  I saved it and went to bed.  When I woke up the next morning it was gone.  So I will not do my fiction writing on blogger anymore.  Phillip tells me it must be here somewhere, since blogger autosaves all the time.  I know that's true, but...  Where the hell did that chapter go?

So, for anyone reading The Narcissist on the blog, it's incomplete and unedited.  But once I have it finished to my satisfaction I'll probably repost it.  In the meantime there are several chapters from Maggy that have been dropped from The Narcissist.  This means I have work that can be turned into short story material.

I hope you all had a lovely New Years Eve and are now embarked on a lazy New Year's Day.  I went to the best New Year's Eve party ever.  I spent last night partying on Twitter.  It was so much fun.

Don't forget to eat blackeyed peas and cornbread today.  It's for good luck in the new year.  Besides, it's good for you.