It's never as bad as it seems

I've been on the phone a lot over the last couple of days.

I'm going to have a full-time, eight week job, where I'll be making $15/hour. It is entirely fair and reasonable to assume that, by the time this ends, I'll have at least $3000 in my bank account. And with any luck, that places me just a few weeks in front of City Year, which I think will be the opportunity of a lifetime.

I'm now done with the draft of the first 2.5 chapters of The Indomitable Witch of Clives. That doesn't sound very impressive, except I'm also almost done with chapters 4 and 5, and I'm about a third of the way done with 6. Also, more importantly, there will only be six chapters total. Word or page count doesn't make a book, but double-spaced in Word I'm above 64,000 words and 196 pages. I haven't found nary a bite on The Selfsame Chime, but it'll feel good to soon have two entire novels finished.

It sometimes concerns me that I've written these so fast. The Selfsame Chime's first words were put to paper after I moved to Vacaville (in September), and considered done (although still open to editing) by New Years. The Indomitable Witch of Clives is work done almost entirely in 2009, and it seems mighty fast to be weeks away from having a draft done. That'll be almost three months for the former and little more than that for the latter. Something seems really wrong with that, when you consider that many successful novelists only publish a few novels in their entire life. Is it that they take years to complete a project, that they decide against publishing the vast majority of what they write, or that they are occupied with too many other things that distract them from writing? I suppose I have a bit of an advantage, as I'm writing of stories whose basest elements I conceived years ago. But I certainly wouldn't want to become someone who thinks he's writing heavy literature and is really writing throw-away romance.

It's still hard to get an outside perspective on my writing. Michael has an answer to almost every question you ask him. "Was there any part that dragged?" He'll come up with a part. "How did you feel about the character development?" He'll have someone who was developed very well and another who needed something. My mom can tell you if she liked it or didn't like it (although I doubt she'd tell me if she didn't) and can discuss it a bit, but mostly edits as a spellcheck. My dad doesn't want edit at all; rather, he wants to discuss ideas and concepts introduced by the stories. They're all very helpful and I really appreciate them, but it's like, how do I really know if I suck or not? If agents accept me then I'm good, if they reject me then I suck? But most agents I've sent in to only read the query letters, and they probably skim those at that. Or am I too stubborn to see the message the many rejections are sending me? Am I over-confident in my writing and therefore I can't see any subtle proof that it doesn't have value? I certainly am confident, but it's just very hard to know. Maybe it's really good stuff but no one will publish it in my entire life. Maybe someone will publish it and it'll be considered the worst bunk ever written. I'll probably self-publish if no one else will take me on. But until I have the capital for that, it's more and more writing, more and more witches of Clives.