madwriter

This month, or rather the hours that are left of it, marks 30 years since I decided I wanted to be a writer. That desire never went away, although there where stretches where I tried to ignore it, and long stretches where I did little to no writing for one reason or another...usually because I was negatively critical of my own work and skills. I've been meaning to write more about that anniversary but have procrastinated as other things have claimed my attention (including but not limited to writing work)...and now as the month itself is ending I find myself procrastinating again, because I have only time for a shorter entry, and and I wanted to post some sort of update of what I've been up to writing-wise.

The biggest personal news along those lines, and maybe professional too in the long run, was that after a year and ten months of working on the giant epic Michenerian novel Arizona, I finally broke down in the face of several realities and decided to split the book into a series. I hate the loss of the sweeping scope all contained between two covers, the loss of seeing one place and its people changing over centuries. But the professional reality is that not only was the book getting too unwieldy, it's hard to sell American-based historical fiction right now. A series would have a better chance, but even in Michener's heyday the giant historical was frowned upon. He managed to sell them much because he was already a Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times bestselling author, whereas I come into the historical fiction market as a nobody.

On the other hand, I realized a couple of days ago that the upside to this is having vastly more freedom with the books--especially with what has become the third novel of the trilogy. There are several storylines in the late 19th-early 21st century sections I mournfully decided to cut some time ago which can now be restored.

And with a few keystrokes (along with a good bit of rewriting and editing), I suddenly have two more finished novels under my belt. That kinda sorta feels like cheating to me, but not so much that I won't try to sell them once I go over them one more time. As soon as I figure out what I want to do with them.

(And yes, I did think...for a long time...about self-publishing Arizona as a single novel. But I wouldn't do that without getting it professionally edited, and I don't want to imagine the cost of doing that for a 350,000 word manuscript.)

So Arizona is now the Arizona Saga, with the following tentative titles: Nothing to Break the Sunlight (a paraphrase from a quote by Geronimo) covers the end of the Ice Age to A.D. 1700, prehistoric and Spanish Arizona. Wolves in the Desert covers 1776 to 1861. What is likely to be the final volume, Copper Heart, goes from 1861 to the present day.

Since this bit of work apparently wasn't enough for me, I also knocked out a summary of the first Shenandoah novel, newly retitled Freedom's Valley, and started submitting it to agents. It helped that I got an unexpected paid week of vacation (thanks to my boss insisting we take as much of our use-it-or-lose-it time as we could before it disappeared today). My aim during this past week was to pretend I was a full-time writer. While the work of the week didn't quite pan out as I'd planned (with hardly any new writing done), I got some valuable stuff done and maybe a bit of insight into other stuff an author contends with that doesn't include sitting down at the keyboard to create new copy.

Tomorrow I dive back into my normal day job schedule while still paddling like mad with the writing.