Back To Work

Back To Work

It’s March now. The Southern California Writer’s Conference ended two weeks ago. The novel is finished. It’s time I start polishing my manuscript into a fine shine and getting those query letters started. I expected to take a few days to decompress. I’m not surprised, though, that I’ve let two weeks go by.

I’m one of those people who have a hard time starting a new project. Yes, the novel is done, but there is still an ominous mountain of work to do, and I hesitate and equivocate. Once I get myself engaged, I’m all in. It’s that first step which I always find hard to take.

Our writer’s group meets on Thursday. By then I WILL be back at work. I’m not sure yet exactly in what order I’m going to work on my many tasks. I know I need to craft a final, clean manuscript before I will let it out of my hands. I dithered over how to do this, but the solution is simple. First of all, I want to be able to make editing corrections myself. It is a fundamental element of my craft. I’m still learning, though, so I’ll continue to rely on my volunteer editor to help clean up the mistakes I make. Between the two of us, my expectation is that the manuscript will be good enough to get the eye of agents and publishers.

I am smiling as I write because I find myself already noticing problems. For example, re-read the first sentence in the second paragraph, which has fourteen words. “I’m one of those people who have a hard time starting a new project.” That is not the original sentence. It read: “I’m one of those people that has a hard time getting started on a new project.” It has sixteen words. Eliminating small problems can make a big difference overall.

Next up is my website. When I built the current J Walker Bell website I included all four of my blogs. My idea to drive content to the website by enticing them to read the blogs didn’t turn out quite like I wanted. The website became less and less about my writing and more about the other things I was doing. I was also not consistent in posting blogs, and that, too, was a problem.

Despite its flaws, I like the site. I designed and built it myself using Wordpress. I selected and used a template for the basic design and then tweaked it using Wordpress tools. I am no expert, but I had fun learning. Even so, it was a lot of work.

I have a novel to nurture now, and the existing multi-purpose website doesn’t meet my needs anymore. My Wordpress skills are admittedly rusty from disuse. Still, I am going to take a crack at building a new site. I know what I want. It will be very focused on the novel. I even have a template based on studying many writer’s websites as well as advice I received at last year’s La Jolla conference. Keep an eye out for the site’s coming out party.

Okay, the post is done. I’m now officially back at work.