What This Writer Does While Waiting

Waiting. Publishing your writing is so full of waiting to hear from an agent or editor that medieval torture begins to seem like a diversion to inflict on yourself while enduring the greater agony. I'm at another waiting stage with my novel-in-progress, The Renaissance Club. I've been working on this for so long that I can't look at it right now without guidance. I need an agent or editor to hold my hand and tell me what I'm reading. I'm waiting to hear from an agent, and the longer I work on this, the slower time seems to go. It's going slower than for this 19th century girl with her print book in hand.

One of the things I'm doing while waiting to hear from the agent is blog. Here, for example, is my Baroque rockstar bad boy hero, Bernini, in his self-portrait. I'd also add an image of Rome as I remember it on my first day when, like May, I couldn't wait to get out into one of the most incredible cities I've ever seen. And here are my first two paragraphs:
 
If she could ask the great Renaissance sculptor Bernini one thing it would be, “If I were a piece of stone, how would you chisel me free?”

But May was a realist. Instead of fantasizing one more time about the subject of her master’s thesis, the way she did in her tiny office at the college, she stuffed a lipstick, blush, and water bottle into her backpack. She twisted the image of Bernini into a mental topknot and scrambled to get out of the hotel room into Rome before Darren emerged from the bathroom.

The other thing I've done while waiting is to plan a new novel (that's a no-brainer -- if you're hooked on writing fiction) and to research publishing and its future. Trying to peer into the crystal ball is something it seems few in the industry really want to do. It's very scary because this is an industry on the brink of The Unknown. A thing far scarier than anything in a Stephen King novel.
If you're curious, here are two great publishing-futurist gurus who are lively, intelligent, and crazily informed:

The Creative Penn - by Joanna Penn
Thad McIlroy's very geeky (and therefor fascinating) The Future of Publishing.

WARNING! If you are device-averse and print-dependent, do NOT peruse these. They will make you uts. But I'm the daughter of a rocket engineer and I do love my technology, so I find this endlessly fascinating.

Stay tuned for the future of The Renaissance Club. What will happen when May stops being a realist and encounters her adored genius?



Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,