Submitting my novel — now what?

I finished writing my first novel! Well, as finished as can be in its current format. I know it will take a bit more editing before publication. But I feel proud I sculpted it into a shape for submitting to publishers and agents. It took about s16 months, five edits by me, one edit by an editor, a manuscript assessment, and a round of beta reading to get to this place.

A friend of a friend, with connections in the publishing world, offered to show my pitch around town. I don’t expect much will come of this, but you never know. I also submitted the manuscript to a publisher.

I follow a lot of authors on Twitter and through their websites. I know the likelihood of my first submission being accepted for publication is miniscule. I’m okay with that. I think it is important to have my novel out there, in the world, gaining experience for me. Hopefully the feedback I receive, even as rejections, will help me hone the process and my writing skills. I’ve never done anything like this before, so it’s a steep learning curve.

Writing this novel has taught me I work well when I focus on one or two projects at a time. When I first started writing this novel, I was also writing short stories, essays, poems, and scripts for publication and competitions all over the world. This scattergun approach to writing kept me away from my novel for too long, and fractured my thinking. So, I changed the way I worked. I still wrote pieces for competitions and submissions, but I kept them small and infrequent to prevent them distracting me from my novel. This strategy worked, and now I have a completed manuscript. Yay me!

Now I have to decide what the hell to work on next.

I have a few things in my ideas’ spreadsheet (don’t all writers have one of these?). This includes the first draft of two and half books in a five book supernatural crime series; the first draft of an erotic fiction novel; and the outline for an essay.

I decided to work on the essay first. It’s for a competition closing in January. As the silly season takes over my social life and my brain becomes befuddled with alcohol, it will be easier to focus on a shorter piece, with a deadline. Also, I‘ll keep working on my erotic fiction novel. I’ve listed this as my next WIP in my submission, so it would be good to have something more substantial to refer to if asked.

As excited as I am to have made this decision and have engaging WIPs to concentrate on, I’m also a little disappointed that I’ll be delaying my supernatural crime series. I guess this is the challenge many writers, or creatives in general, face. When ideas start flowing, it can be difficult to stay focused on one or two projects. As I said, I leant constantly switching between projects doesn’t work that well for me. One or two detailed ventures at a time, with a smattering of smaller works in between, helps me succeed.

So, there you go. Now, I should stop babbling on to you and get back to work. Although … I’m halfway through Cowboy Bebop on Netflix. I really should finish that before I get distracted, right?