well, I'm back

I haven't done well with this blogging thing. This isn't the only time I've tried it, and I didn't do well then either. So why try again? Because the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, and I'm trying for certifiable.

But beyond that, I actually have something to write about. So here is the whole story:

A long time ago (ok, November 2005), I was working at an office while putting my husband through his Ph.D. I knew what I really wanted to do was write, but I had a full time job, friends, voluteer stuff, a husband who was perpetually nuts from the horrors of graduate work and scientific research. It wasn't a great time. So I started a blog (my first failed blog) and on it was a progressing story. Not anything I thought out. I had ideas for "serious" books, but this wasn't going to be a serious novel. It was just a way to keep writing here and there in the hopes that eventually I'd learn how to write a novel. I'd attempted 3 before and never gotten very far. This starting over and over at things I'm no good at is a trend. Eventually it sticks.

I had this crazy idea about a group of secretary spies. After all, secretaries know everything and they really do run the world, so there must be a group of secretaries out there saving the world from evil villians and such. I could just see my secretary from grade school, her gray curly helmet hair and a sweatshirt with teddybears on it, pulling out an Uzi or some such. She'd have made a great spy. No one crossed her. With no more ideas than that, I proceeded to write.

But after about 9 "episodes" (webisodes) I quit. However, some friends liked it and said I should resurrect it. So one day a few months later I was emailing a friend funny bits while goofing off at work and I continued the story. She mentioned there were a couple other friends who would also be interested so I emailed it to them as well. And soon other friends heard and wanted to be on the mailing list. I just wrote whenever I had time at work, with no set schedule. Friends forwarded it to their friends and soon I had people I didn't know asking to be on the mailing list and by the way, where was the beginning.

Pretty soon my list of people who wanted the updates was longer than my email at the time could handle and sending people the beginning meant having to forward 20 or more old emails to them. And that wasn't including the first 9 episodes that had been on the blog and I'd never kept a copy of.

Someone suggested I put up a website which would let people read the archives to their hearts content and I could put the new stuff up there. So I did. I learned some HTML. I got a domain name. Spies and Secretaries went up in March 2006 and ran until March 2007 when I finished the story and the website went down, since I couldn't afford to pay for it anymore. Things had changed. The husband had graduated with his degree and we'd moved to New York where things are much more expensive. But in that time I'd gotten a fair number of readers and I'd learned I could actually stick with and write a novel.

After the website went down a number of the readers urged me to try to get the thing published as a novel. I said ok. But I had no idea what that would entail. For one thing, I had a problem: it wasn't very good. At least I didn't think so. It had it's funny moments and some likable characters, but as a whole, it was sort of messy.

I had no idea what I was doing, however, so in May 2007 I attended a conference that had a whole round up of agents. You spent 3 minutes with an agent and then if they were interested they said to write them. Technically you were only supposed to do it if you had the novel ready to go. I didn't. I had a mess. But I did it anyway and the agents were interested. So I went back home and tried to revise. I realized I couldn't revise this and so let it go, deciding it was high time I got a real job anyway.

However the economy was starting its downturn and no one wanted to hire someone who'd been a low-level secretary for the last five years even if she did have graduate work. No experience beyond office work meant no one wanted to hire me for anything other than office work. The only real interview I got was for an unpaid internship at an agent's office and even she didn't want me (she was quite nice though). I couldn't even give away my work (unless it was answering phones and filing).

By spring 2008, I'd bottomed out. I attempted writing another novel, but couldn't get anywhere at all. I tried to get some other stuff published and no one wanted it. I went back to Spies and Secretaries. This time I was thinking webcomic.

Except I can't draw. But it made me look again at the stuff I had. And I liked it. It was a mess. It was completely unfixable. But it had some moments. I decided to start over from scratch. Previously I'd always written things by winging it. No plots, no plans, no idea of the ending. I'd write the first draft and then revise the mess. This worked fine for short stories. I'd even had a few of them published. I had done just that with Spies and Secretaries and it didn't seem to be working for me. Not on a longer work, anyway.

So when I decided to start over I sat down with a notebook and made a full outline of the story. I figured out subplots and characters and histories. It took about a month. And then I sat down to write. Some of it was easy. Some of it I had already written and could pull directly off the previous stuff. But most of it was all new. Same characters, same situation, but now with some structure and maybe a coherent plot.

I finished it last fall and am now working on the third draft. And that's why I decided to attempt a blog again. I've never tried to publish a book before (the previous ones being too awful and unfinished to bother with). I have no idea what I'm doing. And for some reason I think it would be useful to the world to write about this journey as I finish revising and try to get published. Who knows, maybe my mistakes and missteps will help someone else avoid the same problems.

This blog probably won't be all about writing and publishing, but that is what I am specifically setting out to talk about. I will still probably post pictures of my cat.

The big news of the day is I finally have the first three chapters in a form that I'm willing to let someone else look at them. And so I have passed them on to two of my friends, one who read the original stuff and one who didn't and now I just have to wait for their responses. I am attempting to practice patience. But I always pace nervously when waiting for feedback. And munch things. Tonight I intend to spend watching for email and eating cookies.