Blast from the Past

I was cleaning out a desk drawer and came across an envelope titled Postmarks.

Ah yes, there was a time when I planned to save every postmark that adorned my rejects.

I saved the no thanks letters and cards in a file. But saving postmarks cut from an envelope? A useless practice.

Perhaps I was hopeful it would remain a thin, rarely-used envelope. And it did remain thin, for we moved residences shortly thereafter and I discontinued the silly ritual.

I dug through the postmarks and was startled to see the year 1993. Hmm. 14 years ago. That would have made it a reject for Q. I should say Whew. There's no way Q was ready in 1993 to be published. But it did catch the eye of a respected agent. She advised me to cut it down.

I was green at the time, didn't realize her words meant to severely prune. The original novel was 145,000 words. I reduced it by 5000, sent it back. She kindly told me it needed further cuts

I was still at the stage where I believed further cuts would impact the plot--I needed all those words to tell the full story.

So I set Q aside for a while and worked on other things, romantic sagas, mysteries, poetry, whatever caught my fancy at the time. But I returned to it again, did a too-severe hack job, hated it, put half the stuff I had taken out back in, still hated it. Went on to other things again.

But I still believed in the story. If I could just shape it properly, it might work. So again, I trimmed, entire subplots had to go. Extraneous words -- out. All the main events stayed. Some I even embellished. But only a little bit.

Now Q is a lean, mean 109,000 words. Is it ready in 2007 to be published? Yes, I feel it is. Unfortunately I don't have the final say.

Quote:

You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.
-- Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)