Project description

Happy new year!

It’s been nearly six months since I completed a draft of my novel. As thrilled as I was to finish that draft, I always knew there was lots more work ahead. Sure, I’d planned out a scene-by-scene outline and followed this faithfully, but that didn’t mean I ended up with a polished manuscript. When I sent the draft out to a handful of readers, I asked them for constructive criticism: what was working? What did I need to fix?

Some of their feedback was very positive. They told me that the overall story worked well, with compelling characters and conflicts. There were lots of areas to improve, though: Inconsistent pacing. Too many secondary characters. One protagonist more developed than the other. The whole draft was hampered by too much explaining, too much backstory, too much “scaffolding.”

All of this is true. I reread the draft this fall, taking my own notes. There’s lots of work to do. I feel as though my finished draft was a jigsaw puzzle, and now I need to pull the whole thing apart and examine each piece to see what should stay and what should go. Ultimately, I’ll need to rebuild the puzzle to create a new and improved draft.

Where to begin? Well, first of all, I applied for an arts grant. Now that I’ve published a few stories, I’m eligible for an “emerging artist” grant from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.  I’ve never written a grant proposal before, so it took me weeks to put together the application. I had to submit a writing CV, a portfolio of my work, and a project description; not just a plot summary for this next draft, but an artist’s statement of intent. I had to examine my own motivations for writing this book and justify the project: why this book? Why me? Why now?

It was all very intense, but I got it done and submitted my application in December. Now I have to wait until March to find out if I’m successful. Cross your fingers, please!

In the meantime, I’ve started planning my revisions for this next draft. I’ve organized my notes and feedback into categories for various characters and subplots, and I’m doing a lot of free writing to explore and connect my ideas.

I’ve also signed up for another of UBC’s online courses, which starts next week. This one is called “How to write a novel: Edit & Revise.” Perfect timing, right? Stay tuned to see how it goes!

P.S. In case you didn’t see my posts on social media, I’ve had another story published! I wrote “Click Bait” nearly two years ago, but it’s just appeared in the latest issue of Hamilton Arts & Letters. If you read it, I’d love to know what you think!