Yesterday I had a long discussion with Robin (my agent), the second in two days.
Along with figuring out how to rewrite the Onyx proposal, we formulated the beginnings of a strategy for moving on and out. We might not need it, but then again, we might.
I ended up spending time shooting a bunch of existing proposals to her that are now with other editors. This morning, or at least what’s left of it, since I woke up at three AM with a screaming sinus headache, I have to rewrite the proposal one more time. From 3-6 AM, I did a few notebook pages, because I didn’t feel good enough to do any real work. I fell back to sleep at 6 AM, and didn’t get up until around 8:30, or get started with work until tennish.
When I have the proposal finished, I want three thousand words on WFH1, which I did not get yesterday. Deadline-wise, I’m still okay. I’m making good progress on the manuscript, and overall, I like what I’m getting.
I’m discovering that if I’m not keeping my old name and my backlist, I’m still wedded to my philosophy, but utterly open to genre. I love playing with elements of science and the supernatural; one of the early childhood entries my mother my baby book was the fact that I was fascinated by witches and ghosts, and the allure magic and the unknows has never left me.
Doing the little single-line drawings in the notebook has been a sort of subject-matter Rorshach test for me. The caterpillar-through-butterfly sequence was an illustration of the content of the entry, but after that, I’ve had no idea, or at most a vague thematic idea, of what the drawing would be. When I put the pen down, I’m not sure where it will go or what I will make of it. I start following my hand, and, just like ten-minute freewriting, I let my subconscious lead and see what happens.
The results are curious, and I’m interested to see how they’ll evolve over the next few days. I’m tempted to do some real drawings, too, but when I do, I get so caught up in technical aspects that I’m afraid I’ll lose the little psychological revelations.
Anyway.
Need to get to work.
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