by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
So. About a year ago, I finished an actual novel-length-novel about a woman named Union Pang obsessed with owning a small-town newspaper. But a few things happened that made me feel that I couldn’t query it.
One was, the people I gave to read it thought it sucked. The second was, at about the same time, I realized the stakes were just too low. So the heroine wanted to buy a small town newspaper — so what?
So, for about a year, I moped. I felt the cold hand of time turning the clock and I just didn’t believe in my writing. But, gradually, since about New Year’s, I’ve started to feel that familiar itch.
What I decided to do was to cherry pick the best bits of the novel I finished and turn that into the first act of a novel fused with the second draft of another novel in the same universe. Or, put another way, I had a second draft that was a murder-in-a-small-town in the same universe, got frustrated and decided to write a novel that was sort of a set up for a six novel series.
That “setup novel” was the novel I realized I couldn’t query and so now I’m putting the two novels back together again, in a sense.
It’s a long story.
Anyway, the cherry picking of the old novel to make a first act worked really well. But I’m in the second act now, and whoa buddy. The two just don’t jibe very well. I have an entire character from the first act that….just at the moment has nothing to do.
And, what’s more, the first half of the second act is already way too long at about 60 scenes. (The first act is also about that length.)
I might be forced to trim a few scenes simply so the novel isn’t 200,000 words. But at the same time, I have to shoe horn something for the character I love from the new first act to do.
But the game is afoot. It may take me a little while, but I still think I’m on track to query this new novel no later than starting around September 1st. It may be closer to October 1, but that’s getting a little too close to the “we don’t do anything because it’s the holidays” part of the year for the infotainment industrial complex.
