My writing is going to be taking a bit of a back seat over summer as I need to study some new skills for my career and this means dedicating time to it, and taking that time from my writing. I’ll continue to blog and post competitions and things. I’m sure that I’ll be doing something writing related and I do have a few releases to put out over summer.
There’s just a lot to do at work and I feel as though I need to split my time more effectively in order to keep progressing in my career. Unfortunately, writing does suck up a lot of my spare time, so it’s that which has to give on this occasion. I have been so focused on learning new things since coming back from holiday that I couldn’t really keep my attention fixed on completing the second draft of Heart of Darkness. I wasn’t giving it the attention it deserved and my editing was turning more into a lazy reading session. That’s not good! So I’ve decided to put it on hold for now, complete a massive list of learning tasks for my job, and then approach the edit with fresh eyes (after a good read of some of my editing books) and I’m sure everything will be much better for it.
I sometimes take breaks like this and it always refreshes me and gives me the energy to start writing again. Of course, I’m stuck in edit-Hell at the moment as I have so many stories to edit (and so many waiting to be written) that it just seems as though that’s all I’ll be doing forever!
I think reading a bit of Love Immortal the other day really hit it home that I was doing lazy editing on Heart of Darkness. With Love Immortal, I went all out, pulled out those stops and really got stuck in on the editing. Approached and defeated a lot of passives, he/she sentences, and weak constructions. I haven’t really been doing that with Heart of Darkness and some of my other stories as I was a bit disheartened by the number of rejections that Love Immortal received from agents (but I do think that was a result of the 155,000 word count!). I need to recapture that dedication to editing and really polish up my stories to give them the best chance they have, and I can’t do that when I have a head full of programming languages and other things. Lol.
Heavens… this is beginning to sound like a quit post. Don’t worry! I’m not hanging up my pad and pen just yet. I’ll be back on that editing wagon soon enough (hopefully the writing one too).
I have the release of Her Dark Angel coming at the end of August. That should be exciting. With my focus firmly fixed on gunning for print and an agent, I haven’t released a paid-for story in a long time. I’ve completely forgotten the whole review submission nightmare and promotion insanity! That should be a lovely way of getting back on the writing saddle… if a little manic.
Once that’s out there in the big wide world, it’ll be time to decide whether I’m going to do the final polish on Ascension first and send it out to agents, or whether I’m going to do the second draft of Heart of Darkness.
Decisions… decisions…
