It’s 01:31 am. I’m drunk. And in crying over Apollonia. And now I can’t stop. Why did I have to write this? I could have gone with cozy fantasy but no, let’s do epic and have some real angst around the story. And now I can’t stop crying. Aaaaaaa why.
The Fool symbolizes New Beginnings. I do want to write this down. I literally had the shittiest week. Something must have happened astrologically. I’ve heard I had an Aries stellium over me, like seven planets. And then I was in the query trenches, and work had been infernal, with the mobile app release delayed, and I had to rearrange the entire backlog around that. I wrote like 17 user stories and raised around 32 bugs.
Anyway. I was super anxious this week. It was fun to be in QueryPit and all, but my nerves were all over the place.
But today, I closed my computer, turned off my phone, and just sat quietly under the sun to write Book 2 arcs, plot, and everything that was on my mind. And I just… wrote down the entire saga. Book 3’s plot is almost done.
My wrist hurts, and my handwriting was barely legible by the end of the day, but… I was so happy when I was doing it. It felt like fireworks of dopamine exploding in my brain. I just feel like telling everyone to go and write a book (or three), because it’s just so merry to do something like this. I can’t believe all the characters I’ve wrote, their stories, their feelings. Pierre still makes me cry everytime I read chapter 8, and I know I will cry a river when I get to write Apollonia. I’m just so lucky, so blessed.
Finished my query package today and just queried an agent for the first time 🙂
So it’s been a long week and a lot has happened. I finished the third edition, which, by the way, from edition 1 to edition 2, already had like 8 versions of the book. Cut down from 220K to 174K to 147K, I think, and somehow, I know it’s still too long and too bold for a debut, but I think the arcs are complete, and the whole worldbuilding and the plot are offering what a standalone book should have.
So I decided it was a fair word count and gave it a shot. I still don’t know how this decision will be received, but I am confident the book has what it needs. Let’s see how the feedback goes, and if it is still very long… I will have to move to a fourth edition, maybe even a fifth.
I’m really bad at writing things that are only about me. I do feel my life has little things worth documenting, but sometimes writing about oneself can be really cringe; at least for me. So for this milestone, I’ve taken some “blogging advice” from Pinterest: ask some questions about this event, and the post would be the answers you provide.
I finished the second edition today!
24 chapters for Book 1. 177K words. First edition locked. Second edition in progress. Up to now: 20/24 chapters locked after the second edition. What does editing do to me? Basically, I’m jumping back and forth between “I’m so good at this!” and “This sucks!” and “I’m gonna cry” and “This doesn’t make sense.”
And then falling into the eternal loop of “I’m never finishing this” and “maybe it needs a third, fourth, fifteenth edition pass.”
I just had the last hammer of my Eight of Pentacles moment. 177K words and 24 chapters. I have to say, nothing miraculous happened in the moment I typed the last period. But then, and I still can’t believe it, the sky opened, and a storm poured down. I heard Neptune has entered my sign today? So this is what it feels like when there’s alignment between the universe and me. First draft is finished. I have a complete book in my hands now.