If you thought my love of Surrealist was a lot in the last update, buckle in, it only gets more obnoxious from here. In all seriousness, I am having a blast reading through Surrealist. It has been nice to slow down a bit this month and read my own work.
Progress
I read through Surrealist one and a half times this month. That is approximately 420 pages of reading/revision. The first 280 pages were a line edit in book order, and the rest was reading the first half of the book chronologically. That is the half of the book that was not initially chronological, and I have to say, I am dumbfounded at how well the continuity held up. In fact, I am tempted to recommend to future readers that they read the book in book order and then immediately again in chronological order, as it illuminates elements of the plot and gives a different meaning than the actual order does (and I’m saying that as the person who wrote it). I still believe that the book order is the best way to present this story, but chronological order has its own merit, which is really interesting since I didn’t write it chronologically.
I also revised Project C in a few days, and it has one more week with Betas before I will do another revision on it. Due to this month being a reading and revision month, the word count is negligible. I ended up writing in 100 words per revising day as a filler because I didn’t want to keep track.
Liesure
I’ve continued watching The Big Bang Theory as I do illustration work. That might be the only show I’ve watched this month.
As for literature, I was supposed to read Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer as it is one of my comparison titles for Surrealist, but I have not gotten to it yet. Hopefully, I will get to read it in May. I need to read it to make sure I know what I’m talking about with it being a comp.
If I’m completely honest, reading through Surrealist has been a bit of a leisure for me. I found, even as I was line editing, that I would fall into the story and forget to look at the words. I imagine that this is a great problem to have. This, coupled with the spring weather that rivals fall in terms of making my sunroom delightful, has created some nice morning reads.
The biggest leisure activity of the month, however, was a trip to Pittsburgh to see Merlin Sheldrake speak. He is the author of Entangled Life, which was one of the books I read before writing Mushroom Dragon. He spoke about his current research in mycology, the ecological impacts of fungi, and their importance to the world. I met some interesting people and got a signed and personalized copy of his book. I may do a deeper dive into his work and my experience at the event, and post it on my website at some point, but no promises.
What I’m Learning
It is nice to take it slower and enjoy my stories. One of the nice things about working on multiple projects at a time is that I do get a decent amount of time away from one project while I’m working on another. This allows me to be as productive as I want to be while also being able to come back to my projects with fresh eyes and experience the stories as a reader might. Of course, I know what will happen, but I get to enjoy the book too.
It is interesting, though, I usually struggle to enjoy my stories when I am in revision mode because I am looking for flaws. However, with Surrealist, I was able to enjoy reading it despite being in revision mode. I believe that is a significant accomplishment.
Looking Forward
The first thing on my schedule is to finish reading the second half of Surrealist. As soon as that is done, I will send the manuscript to betas. I will receive Project C betas back in a little over a week and do another revision of it before jumping into Project D. In the time between sending out the Surrealist beta and receiving the Project C beta, I will work on two short stories, my query letter, and synopsis for Surrealist. I am actually a little bit ahead of schedule, which means betas for Surrealist will go out a little earlier than expected, giving me this little window to work on short stories I haven’t had time for.
I am hoping to get a decent way into Project D before June, as my graduate classes will start up again, but drafting shouldn’t be too bad during school. My betas for Surrealist will be back sometime early June, so I will pause Project D for a moment to revise Surrealist and send my first batch of queries. Everything is moving along, and I am getting more and more excited about querying. I can tell based on the fact that my YouTube recommendations are mainly composed of writing and querying-related content.
See you next month,
Naomi
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