Hot Revision Summer 2024
April 30
Good news! I found a CP to beta read Hand Magic! The bad news: I found a CP to beta read Hand Magic.
And man did I get burned to the ground.
In hindsight, I probably should have expected that. You can’t write a novel in three weeks and expect it to be flawless. After a day of being bummed, I realized I would get to work on Hand Magic more, which is amazing! I was so sad when I finished it. I’d eaten my cake and then I had no more cake to eat. But now I have cake again, and I am having so much fun snackin’ away!
I’ve been given permission (a massive gas flame under the ass, I should say) to do more world-building, which I’m stoked about. I held back on that during the first go-around, I think because I wanted to focus on story line, but now I’ve been hitting the library like every day and loving it. I’m lost in the absolute sauce of British history and this book is going to be so much stronger for it. Also, I’m chipping away at the characters and the plot, as expected. Expect more twists and a powerful mystery thread for Revision Manuscript One!
In other news, I got word from Tin House! I cut the email down, but the gist was that all of the positions in the YA Summer Workshop were deposited, so if anyone withdraws at this point, it’ll be at a financial cost. So basically, the workshop is full. But they said all of these other nice things!
I still think it’s hilarious that Tin House Workshop feels it so necessary to comfort me on getting as far as I did. Twenty wait-list applicants?? Narrowed down to five?? Including me??? That’s the last thing I needed to be consoled over.
I’m not going to audit. I can’t pay $600 for a round trip flight to Portland, $800 for room and board, $300 for the auditing pass, and then not even get a workshop out of it. But it helped me reach the realization that with the nearly two grand it would cost to audit at Tin House, I can do some stuff that will actually help me with developing the novel.
Like say…traveling to Ireland and to Stonehenge to do on-site research.
I love traveling a little too much. This summer was going to be me working a lot and paying off the last research trip. But maybe I can do both if I’m clever about it.
Muse & the Marketplace is in a week and a half! I’m a little nervous, but mostly excited! My agent meeting is in the morning of the first day of the conference, naturally. But maybe that’s a good thing. If it was on Sunday, I’d just be nervous and stressed all weekend.
So that’s all I’ve got for you today. I can’t wait to tell you all about Muse afterwards!
xx Claire
