Preemptive Retaliation

So the night before last I finished the 3rd draft of Francine is a Robot. Now I am in the awkward position of having to write something every day to keep a streak going, only to have nothing quite to write on yet.

I don’t want to talk much about FiaR here. Suffice to say that I am happy with the novel. I know it’s not perfect, and that if I had infinite time I would scrap the whole thing and rewrite it from scratch. But I like the novel. As I was editing it I kept coming across segments that I forgot I wrote and being genuinely impressed with myself. I like this novel. The next step for it is to print off a bunch of copies, send them to my friends, and let them feed back to me what they think. A daunting prospect, but one I’ve done before so it’s not that bad.

It’s making me think back to The Making Of though and how, in the end, I didn’t really do anything with that novel. I queried about a dozen different agents hoping for representation, but had no response. Where do I go from there? I could refine the query, try another load of agents – really get into the grind of it. Maybe I could do another pass over of the text and tighten it up, really let it sing. It’s been a while since I’ve read it, so there might be some things I can improve on.

But, then again, I started a new project over the summer didn’t I? Based on an idea that’s been fermenting for years now I jotted down characters and scenes and thoughts on my little videogame novel. Maybe that deserves some time too.

How long do you give a project before you abandon it? How many times do you query a novel before realising that it’s unsellable, or that you’re a rotten salesman? God, I don’t know.

I wish that I could just give my book to people. I wish they could just have it, and they can read it, and they can identify that part of themselves that they think is wrong and realise it’s not so wrong afterall. It’s actually kind of normal. And I want them to feel better about themselves. To feel seen. And I want them to give me a little round of applause and tell me how wonderful I am, and then exit immediately so I cannot prove them wrong.

Maybe Francine is a Robot will be the one to do that for me.