Novel Complete, Four Submissions Away

So… what started as a set of revisions for You’re Never Too Far From Gelassenheit has left me with a novel after Sunday night. That’s right. Sunday, I finally grabbed my balls and hiked up my pants and cranked out the final 3,900 words required to finish the fucking thing.

Which makes me the proud father of two novels at this point. The first never went anywhere. And I have no idea whether this one will either. Still… I’m taking the moment to bask it the glow of accomplishment.

Now, complete doesn’t actually mean… well… complete in this case. It means that I’m done with my first draft. It probably sucks. First drafts usually do. And I need to rewrite the intro to the first chapter. But I’ve known that since I knew this thing was turning into a novel. But still… give me a chance to put it through a draft or two and I might just have something dangerous people!

For those who are curious, the final total clocked in just over 90,000 words. This in 177 days. I averaged about five hundred, or, two pages a day. Of course, I didn’t write two pages a day, though I tried by best until October. But there were days where I wrote nearly 5,000 words and then many, since I moved, where I wrote nothing. Still, it’s a nice round average, don’t you think?

In other news, I got off my ass today and printed out four stories for submission to magazines. I hadn’t submitted anything, again since I moved, so it felt good to do the mailing. The weird thing was remembering to update the addresses on my manuscripts and the accompanying SASE that go along in the package.

But once I figured that out–and that required a reprint of the first page of one of the stories–the rest went rather smoothly.

I’ve got a process.

But those were just the stories sent to publications that don’t accept email submissions. I’ve got another two or three to send via email. So… It’s one hell of a way to start the year. Hopefully, I’ll have some new rejections to begin reporting soon.

Until then, kids. Take it easy.