I took the plunge this year and entered the first chapter of my historical romance in the Mills and Boon New Voices competition. Although I didn't progress past the open to all round, I did get fresh inspiration from the other entrants, and especially from the experiences of the existing authors. Reading about the years of hard work that they had to put in before receiving The Call has made me realise that I really need to start taking my work more seriously if I want to make any kind of progress.
Hence this blog. It's really a place for me to check in every week or so and report on progress. In my working life I've always been accountable to my students, whose performance will suffer if I don't come up with the goods. With writing, however, no one apart from me will suffer if I don't finish anything, so I've got to come up with new ways to motivate myself. Therefore I'm setting myself a target of having to report on my progress here at least once a week. Maybe the prospect of the humiliation of having to confess that I've done nothing will inspire me to get a move on. Maybe...
So - current state of affairs: the first draft of my novel is complete, but it needs a huge amount of editing. I did a lot of work on chapter one prior to posting on the NV site. As it didn't get anywhere it obviously needs more, but I'm going to leave that for a while and go on to chapter two. Maybe I'll have fresh inspiration for ch1 once I'm happier with the next few.
I'll report back in a week. If I haven't got any further, then it's zero chocolate for a week!
Hi Tora!
ReplyDeleteThanks for following the blog. Congratulations on taking the plunge and entering NV. Although the majority of writers put in years of work before publication, there are plenty of stories about writers who have had their first manuscript submission accepted for publication. That could be you!
There's also an author who didn't place in NV last year but who has gone on to have that story published. I think it must be difficult for editors to judge without a synopsis, so don't be disheartened and happy editing!
Thanks, Lacey! I certainly intend to submit to M&B once I've edited my manuscript. As you say, it's hard to judge a book from just the first chapter, so who knows what might happen! But I've got plenty of ideas for my next story if this one doesn't make it. The important thing I've learnt is to keep trying.
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