Saturday, August 21, 2010

The Amazing Flying Fingers

There's nothing more motivating to finish a manuscript than to have your agent call you and say, "So and so is interested in reading more. Have you finished?"

That's the gist of the phone call I received a little over a week ago - right before I was packing my family up for a long weekend in Chicago. I've never felt so ashamed--this manuscript should've been finished at least a month ago. Life got in the way - major drama - so it sat, waiting for me to return.

Luckily for me, my agent was understanding. She's one of the last people on this planet that I want to disappoint. I promised her that it would be done by the end of the month, and I am going to make way, way good on that promise --sorry, still channeling my twelve-year-old main character.

I wrote while driving to Chicago, until my neck hurt. I wrote while my family frolicked in the pool. Then I stopped writing. I enjoyed myself and all the sights we took in. I didn't write on the way home, but thought about my characters problems and how they were going to be solved.

After unpacking, I sat my butt in my chair and I let the words flow. And they've been flowing every since. I did have to do some work for the day job, but I've been able to spend a great deal of my time writing. I've written over ten thousand words in the last five days. Not too bad for someone who hadn't written seriously for over six weeks. Man, if I carved out the time each week, I could write 3 or 4 books in this series in a year. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

Okay, so it's back to my manuscript now. I hope you all get a similar call or THE CALL soon, if you haven't already. I'm certainly hoping that this manuscript is the one that gets me THE CALL. That would be too cool.


Peace,
Kris

2 comments:

Buffy Andrews said...

Congrats Kris. You deserve it. I'm still trying to get the agent call:) You sound super excited about this new book/series and that's awesome. And it sounds like your agent is awesome, too. Good luck to both of you. I want to hear every detail. I love when things work out for people. You're building the sand castle (see my post today) and I know it will be a grand one. Thinking of you, Buffy

Unknown said...

Thanks, Buffy. But I've been doing this long enough to know that, yes, this is the closest I've come, but it's not the real thing. I do love this story and set of characters, and I pray that I'll be writing about them for a long time. But this business is fickle and subjective. I'm just happy to have the challenge of finishing this story at this point.