Revisions are finished, and the current novel is back with my agent. Now begins, again, the tortuous waiting for her to read it. And then she’ll either want more revisions or will deem it ready to go out to editors. If it’s ready to go out to editors, that will mean more waiting. Waiting for weeks and months, if this time is anything like last time.
I am very bad at waiting. Really really really bad at waiting.
If this draft goes out to editors, I’ll get back to work on the next book. Throwing myself headfirst into the next project is the only thing that takes the edge off the waiting. If Gail wants more revisions, and I agree with those revisions, then obviously that’s what next. I’m hesitant to pick up the new book again now, because too much stop-and-start isn’t good for the way I work, and I may very well have to tackle revisions again in a few weeks. I miss the new book, though. It’s where I want to be now. Time to get the current novel out into the world.
That’s awkward, isn’t it? Referring to the current novel, the one that’s in fourth draft and with my agent, and the new novel, the one that’s all of six pages and a character pacing around in my head and waiting for his turn. With my first novel, Drowning Practice, I referred to it by name on the blog right from the beginning because I was sure about the title from the very start. This current book, not so much. It had a working title from the day I began it in October 2005, but the deeper I got into the book, the less that working title fit. I didn’t use that title on the blog because I was a bit embarrassed by it. It just wasn’t right. There was another title, which fit very well, but I was hesitant to use it because of other books it called to mind. After a discussion with Gail, I’ve decided to go with that other title as the working title. So here it is. The current book is tentatively titled Adverse Possession.
Adverse Possession. There you go. I hesitated to use it, because it sounds like a Grisham/Byatt hybrid to my ear, and the book has little or nothing in common with the work of either of those authors. But it fits. It just does. This is a book about adverse possession, both literal and metaphorical. So I’m embracing it. And now I can stop saying “the current novel” this, “the current novel” that. Aren’t you relieved? We now have Drowning Practice, aka The Book They Didn’t Know How to Market; we have Adverse Possession, The Book I Hope They Know How to Market; and Cold Black Stars, The Book That Still Lives Only in My Head.
Got all that? Yeah. Don’t worry about it.
I’m tinkering with some old stories while I wait to hear back from Gail, trying to see if I can bang any of them into some kind of useful shape. Usually waiting to hear back from Gail sends me into full-on Little Suzie Homemaker mode, baking bread, cooking big meals, actually (GASP!) cleaning. I’m not feeling that this time, though. Lingering low-grade depression and I’m happy to eat bread but not so much with the energy to bake it. Someone does need to do some cleaning around here, though…
I love it. Of course, when I was taking the bar exam in NH, I was scribbling furiously away at an essay when I nearly tripped and fell into a lacuna where a term should have been. I panicked mildly for a moment, then rationally left a space and figured if I couldn’t remember the word, I would leave about a minute at the end of the time alloted for that essay to asterisk the space and define the not-remembered term on the left-hand page (I only ever wrote on the right page of exam books in case I needed to edit on the fly).
About two minutes from the end of that essay, I remembered the term.
It was “adverse possession.” When telling that story, the term still slips sideways and refuses to show its face until and unless I mentally avert my eyes and go, “Lalalalala….”
oh it’s great! i love being able to put names to them all… and i can’t wait until i can actually buy them and enjoy them!
fingers crossed…really hard!
Send me stuff to read! I’ll send you the creepy thing I wrote today.
I have a good snickerdoodle recipe.
I’m glad to hear about the writing progress/process – I was wondering how things were going in that area.
I may have said this before, but Cold Black Stars sets up a fabulous sort of ringing in my head.
I love both those names.
It may or may not give you some slight comfort to know that the process you are going through is not atypical and something only you go through, nor just for writers without significant publications yet. It is a universal plight.
The book that sold a month or so ago will be my eighth published novel. Regardless, I could have written this post of yours nearly word for word. Even the house cleaning, which does confuse our biweekly maid, who visibly wonders why the person who pays her to clean has cleaned much of the place before she arrives. (It does give her more time to cook.)
Ditto the title dilemmas. (I wrote about some of my long-term title problems on my webblog, especially my fights with Bantam over titles.)
Novel #1: The Devil You Know became One Easy Piece.
Novel #2: My Sister’s Keeper, the only one that kept the same title from the start. (I think because the house that got it by default when they bought out my original publisher didn’t really care enough about the book to bother with their usual desire to change titles on everything.)
Novel #3: The Last Island became Hatch’s Island.
Novel #4: A Dark and Dangerous Place became Hatch’s Conspiracy.
Novel #5: Among the Dead became Hatch’s Mission.
(3, 4, & 5 produced the nasty fight with Bantam, to the point where I told my agent to never submit anything I write, ever, to Bantam, and I bought back the rights to those 3 books.)
Novel #6: The Ascent of Orpheus became Possessed by Shadows.
Novel #7: Morgan and Victoria became The Common Bond.
Novel #7: Island in the Pines (and they haven’t gotten around yet to asking me to change it, but I’m sure they will).
I don’t understand this fetish with making up new titles; maybe it’s just some way to feel like they have powerful input. I think that in every case, my original title was better than the changed one. Why do we put up with things like that?
Never mind. I know the answer. We are all so desperate to see in print, between covers, the work we have spent months and years sweating blood over, that we hand our balls (or whatever girls hand over) to the publisher from bent knees because they are going to make a book out of our loose pages.
Good luck with this one. You have one of the best agents in the business.
Not sure if you want feedback on this at all, but I can only very vaguely understand what the title means, or covers. Could be because English is not my first language, but I do read lots of English, and I would have walked past* that title simply because I don’t associate anything with it.
The other two though – love those titles, they are so intriguing and make me want to pick up the books and just read..!
*That is, if the writer had been unknown to me, which she isn’t 🙂
Cari, I wish you would name my next novel. (I’m not kidding…) xxxC
Yaaaay! I was on the “Adverse Possession” side of the fence already, so I’m glad that name’s back. It really does fit.
My problem is coming up with titles first that I then want to write poems for. The latest is “Going to the Circus by Myself.” There’s also “Sincere Musics,” which I’ve held onto as a title w/o a home/poem for a long time.