Glad to hear your work is going well! I wish you all the luck with finding a publisher!Jonah wrote: ↑Wed Feb 23, 2022 4:03 am I finally broke my 7-year cycle of being stuck submitting the same series of fantasy novels (that came close with publishers and agents) and wrote two new novels late last summer, back to back, poured out of me. First drafts took 2 months each, and have been sending them out ever since plus continuing to edit. A few bites here and there and interest from a few agents/publishers but nothing yet, though one has generated more interest than the old ones - but mostly I'm just glad I broke the cycle and proved to myself I have more books in me! I'm lining up 2 more in my mind to write now. It's amazing how you can be blocked or focused on one project (in my case, a series of fantasy novels) then when you let go or at least put it on the back burner, all this other stuff rushes to the surface, ideas that before you had struggled to come up with are suddenly there!
Our creative processes seem to be quite different. I was never able to write that much; I don't have a lot of stories or ideas in my head. Most of the things I write are very personal. I spend years working on each novel, then I never let anyone read a word of it - I don't even let anyone know the title - until I find a publisher and it goes into print. It took me five years to finish my first novel, but I found a publisher relatively quickly; however, I had to fund the book myself, because it was a small company that depended on government funds, and since my book didn't get any, we had to find another solution. I live in a small country where the publishing business is not quite blossoming so, even though not perfect, it was a solution that eventually helped me get my book out. And hey, Marcel Proust had to fund the first part of In Search of Lost Time himself, so I'm in good company!
I have been working on my second novel since the end of 2018. My process is this: I work on a text for a few years until it feels done (it took me two years in this case), then I don't touch it for a while (it's been almost a year now), so after enough time has passed, I revisit it with a fresh perspective - because time has passed, and things that used to seem perfect suddenly appear faulty. I usually write with pen and paper and only later copy the text into digital form, but this time I'm doing it the other way around: I have written it on my computer, and now I will copy it with a pen and paper to have a real, physical copy. It may seem odd, but this process will enable me to check every word, every comma, the rhythm of the sentences, every single thing once again, systematically and carefully, in order to get as close to my ideal as possible. Even though it may sound grueling, I'm actually looking forward to it very much, because I love writing, I love the novel I'm working on, and I have been really missing it during the last year.
So, all the aspiring and accomplished writers out there, all the people who love the written word, please, share your thoughts and experiences!
I'm not sure what kind of advice could I possibly give regarding publishing besides this: if you have any kind of work that you consider finished - a book, short story, essay, poem, etc. - just send it to a publisher, literary magazine, or wherever, and think about the consequences (i.e. public scrutiny) after it was published.
I'm not sure that it would be right for me, because I tend to spend hours just editing one or two pages I already spent hours and hours editing before. I rarely add a lot of new text!