Inlanders - Stephen Reese

It was a beautiful spring day. I went for my first bike ride of the year. Skidded through some leftover slush. Mudded up my legs. And when I came home, I found myself poking at the query letter.

Thing’s a little closer to where it needs to be now. Maybe halfway.

And so am I, incidentally.

Halfway through my vacation from the novel.

Halfway near the edit.

I’ve carefully monitored my feelings toward that task as my distance from the novel increases across these months away. There are days I’m chomping at the bit to get started cutting and rewriting. There are days I’m scared shitless of seeing just how bad the first draft turned out (I didn’t look back, you see, as I wrote it - my first time trying this technique, which I’ll discuss in a future post). Ups and downs. As roller-coastery as the writing was.

But as time goes on, my emotions are tipping toward a more balanced, neutral perspective on the whole business. And that’s probably the best place to be in. We’ll see.

In the meantime, the meanwhiles continue, with a few additions:

• Uploading music (and obsessing over playlists) on http://anywhere.fm/Podge
• Reading The Ruins, The Kite Runner, Tuesdays With Morrie and Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures
• Getting the aforementioned bike back on the road

Vacation remains fun!

Two months to go…

- Stephen Reese

So I finished the first draft of Inlanders on 4 February 2008, in the midst of starting a new job, securing a renter for my condo across the country, and suffering the sickening sneezing and snotting stage of my first head cold in over a year. That means I wrote the finale feeling like a crushed pop can being kicked around a particularly dirty part of town…perfect for typing THE END!

Now the manuscript sits untouched by me for at least four months while I cool down, regain some perspective and prepare for the merciless editing phase. To be honest, I can’t wait to hack that bloated, pockmarked, larval sack of a story to grisly pieces, but I must win some distance from it first.

In the meantime, I started work on a new query letter. What a difference from the early attempts at same, way back when Chap 1 was all I had committed to word processor! Even one month outta the jungle, I could see more than just the trees, and was better able to summarize what my mess of sentences might be about.

I’ll keep picking away at said query during this four-month vacation from the novel. Also on the itinerary: a synopsis. But NOT an outline, not until I wade back into the underbrush and start plotting a clear path through the forest. When I’m out the other side, I’ll be ready.

For now, I won’t even open the Word file. There are plenty of meanwhiles to keep me busy in my off-time:

• Uploading music to http://anywhere.fm/Podge
• Reading, for the first time, Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories
• Perusing Monster Hunters and Unexpected back issues
• Enjoying the heck outta Lost season four

My conclusion? Vacation is FUN!

- Stephen Reese