I was insanely productive today. I went to the gym, washed my sheets and remade my bed, bought groceries, refilled some prescriptions, cleaned out my fridge, did some dishes, talked to my niece (happy birthday Sammi!), talked to my parents, paid my bills, put together two query/submission packets for a couple of agents, and wrote 3,089 words of Madeleine and Ferguson's story (the working title is AN INCONVENIENT TITLE -- which could actually work, since Ferguson doesn't want to be a duke, but currently is more of a pun on my first book's title + the fact that I don't have a title for this one). In fact, the only thing I didn't do on my to-do list was vacuum -- and considering that my to-do lists for most weekends are usually overflowing and mostly aspirational, that's pretty good.
I decided to query a couple more agents; of the four queries I sent out two weeks ago, two agents requested partials (which I sent back promptly), and two agents still haven't responded to the initial query letter. Since agents can take up to a few months to respond when they've requested additional material, I'm not holding my breath for a response from the first two. I also set an arbitrary personal goal to have four 'warm' queries out at any given time -- 'warm' in this sense means queries in which the agent hasn't exceeded their self-reported deadlines for responding to my material. Since both of the agents who haven't responded to my queries said that they usually respond to queries within two weeks, it's time to query two more agents to refill my queue. This time, the agents I'm querying require snail-mail queries -- so the wait to hear back will be longer, but hopefully the competition will be a bit less intense since many people seem to be moving to e-queries, and e-queries are so cheap to send that most authors seem to send out dozens at a time.
As for the writing, it was really flowing today. I averaged ~800 or 900 words per hour, so my 3000-word output happened over lunch and tea at Leland Tea Company (the neighborhood tea place that I love; the owner/head dude seems to be on happy pills, but that makes it entertaining, and the tea sandwiches and scones are great), and over another hour-long stint tonight. I have 53 pages or 11,500 words, which means I'm about an eighth of the way through the book. Given that I started it a week ago yesterday, that's awesome progress -- I think it took me two years to get this far with Amelia and Malcolm, and I ended up rewriting almost all of that. If I can keep up this pace (difficult but doable), I could have a complete first draft by the end of March. Then I could set it aside for a proper rest while I go on another binge of socializing, so that I could pick it up again around the beginning of May with fresh eyes and aim to complete the second and final drafts over the course of the summer. Doesn't that sound like fun?
I'm still caffeinated, thanks to the awesome teapot warmer that I got for Christmas from my parents -- it's a glass stand that you put a tealight candle in, which provides enough heat to keep your teapot warm so that you can savor hot tea over a couple of hours rather than hurriedly trying to drink it before it cools. So I drank four or five cups of Samovar's English Breakfast blend -- it has a slightly nutty flavor that you don't usually find in English Breakfast teas, but it's quite nice with milk and sugar. Even with the two small pots of tea I had at Leland Tea Company, I'm nowhere near as caffeinated as I was yesterday, so sleep should come easily. Tomorrow it's back to the mines, where I shall slog my way through endless meetings and try to avoid looking noticeably dreamy as I think about what Madeleine and Ferguson will do next. Goodnight!
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