Our vacation is over.
Well, actually, I’m “officially” back to work tomorrow, but because I expect to be completely swamped with Niteblade stuff and some pressing writing deadlines I have, so I’m blogging today.
One of my goals for this year was:
Figure out what to do with Shadows…and get to work on doing it. This can mean looking for an agent, a publisher or any number of other things. I can’t be specific until I’ve made a decision.
Well, the good news is, I’ve made a decision. It was very difficult because I’ve spent so much time working on it (years) that I’m really close to it, too close, to make a clear and rational decision. Unfortunately, most of my critique partners are also too close to it to give me unbiased advice. Happily, there are people who make a living out of giving clear, unbiased advice about these sorts of things LoL
I hired Kate and Taryn from Teen Eyes Editorial to take a look at the current version of Shadows and tell me what they thought. Their feedback was insightful, in-depth and incredibly helpful. It helped me see that it’s time to put Shadows on a shelf.
Their comments were very positive and encouraging overall but they definitely showed me that Shadows still needs a lot of work before it is ready to go out in the world. And the thing is, I’m kinda tired of it. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the story but I really need some time away from it.
Dudes, I’ve been working on this story off and on for several years. Honestly, I don’t even know what version this draft is. I have learned a ridiculous amount of things about character development, plotting, revision, pacing, dialog (and more!) while I’ve been working on Shadows, but it’s time to move on to something else.
I have a finite amount of time I can spend writing and several other projects demanding my attention. So, at this point I’m going to file Shadows under ‘Learning Experience’ and let it sit in my Dropbox gathering virtual dust. Someday a few years from now I might decide to come back to it, but I rather doubt it.
For now, I’m looking forward to seeing how awesome I can make Twixt and Hollow Children 🙂
I so admire you! I really do. I’m sure it was not an easy decision to shelve Shadows. But sometimes you need to know when to let go.
I’m struggling to decide whether to shelve my WIP for awhile or keep on plugging away. Unfortunately it’s not at the stage where I can hand off to a professional editor – which I would love to do.
I so identified with this: “And the thing is, I’m kinda tired of it. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the story but I really need some time away from it.”
That’s how I’m beginning to feel. I’ve set it aside while I work on some new non-writing projects (er, that is, my day job!), and hope that I can come back to it with some renewed interest.
It was a really difficult decision to make, but I know it was the right one. Once I’d actually made up my mind I felt lighter, so I’m taking that as a good sign 🙂
I hope you manage to decide what to do about your WIP soon. Either way, I bet you’ll find the process of deciding liberating.