I’m sitting in a tiny art gallery on a cold, grey, rainy day that feels more like November than May. The lights are dimmed to showcase delicate tapestries that cast shadow portraits on the clean, white walls. Six pairs of hands tap away at keyboards while I try to keep my allergic sniffling (the only indication that it actually is spring) to a minimum. It always feels a little like we are part of the exhibit, we small group of almost-strangers who gather here twice a year to spend twelve hours filling blank pages.
It’s been a while since I’ve shared any sort of update on where I’m at in the writing/editing/publishing process with my cozy mystery series. Well, I can answer that in one quick sentence: I’m right where I was the last time you saw me.
I exaggerate, of course. Some progress has been made. Four other human beings have read my manuscript and provided feedback. Some edits have happened; I have a checklist of more that need to be done. Just this morning, as part of this writing intensive hosted by Chicken House Press, I had a one-on-one with publisher Alanna Rusnak … that added several major edits to my list.
Will this book ever be done, this story I started to tell almost five years ago? When does the editing stop? When does it finally feel finished?
I don’t have the answers. What I do have is some clarity on what more I need to do to this manuscript and how to go about finding the right publisher for it. It feels like a lot of work.
If I’m honest, that’s probably why this book isn’t finished yet, and why I have four more books in the series drafted (in varying stages of incompletion). I don’t want writing to feel like work. I do words for a living now, and I never could have predicted how much that would impact the creative writing part of my life. It is hard to spend all day typing and proofreading and then somehow find the motivation and creative spark to sit down at the keyboard again.
But this is why I have carved a full Saturday out of my busy schedule and driven to a small town to set up camp in their art gallery. Here, on this liminal day between winter and spring, between first draft and final manuscript, between writing as work and writing as art, there is space for telling stories. I didn’t come here to finish the book. I came here to remember why I still want to.
Aly Writes 