To the best of my recollection, it’s only been a month or so since I last mentioned Positively Anonymous on here. At the time, I mentioned being super excited about what I’d hoped would be the last of my big revisions. There was one thing I didn’t mention in that post: I hadn’t actually done any revisions.
It seems like such a ridiculous thing to avoid doing, not mentioning how you expect your revisions to go before you start them. I’m kind of shaking my head at myself now. But I hadn’t started those revisions then, and as weeks passed without my getting on the ball, I began to realize there was a reason for my procrastination.
Positively Anonymous began as my senior honors thesis about two years ago. And though the story I told in my thesis and the story I was trying to tell with Positively are very similar, the ways in which I had to think about the thesis were very different than the ways in which I viewed Positively.
While I worked on my thesis, length was always my foremost concern. It had to be. Even then I had too much story for the very limited page requirements I had to fit the piece inside. And though the English department was very supportive and helpful in my attempts to cut the story down, I never stopped being aware that what I had written still needed to be SHORTER.
This, in case you were wondering, is a horrible way to try and write a novel. When I began the rewrite that became Positively Anonymous almost a year ago, I’d thought that I was past the thesis mindset about how short was the way to go. I thought I’d taken a lot of big steps with the story. And I had. But they weren’t big enough.
I’ve gotten a ton of good feedback on the MS as it stands. All of my CPs have been amazingly helpful in pointing out where the plot doesn’t make sense or where the emotion is lacking. And because they’ve put so much time and energy into this MS, I feel obligated to put the same time and energy into my revisions.
The problem is that I’m not yet in the head space where I can do that. I’m going to set Positively aside for awhile–how long I’m not sure. And when the story starts gnawing at the inside of my brain again, I’m going to pour everything I’ve got into those revisions so that the end result is something I’ll be super excited to query.
I hope you’re all as excited for that day as I am.