I Finished My Novel, So Now What?

I finished my young adult novel! It feels so great to finish.

Now, I send it to my agent, and we make a proposal to send to publishers. This sounds a lot easier than it is. This takes a long time, and it's very frustrating. I've written four other novels that have been heartily rejected.

If you remember, I thought I'd never write another novel. If you remember, I moved over to non-fiction.

The November National Novel Writing Month woke something up in me, so I'm glad I returned to fiction.

The good news is that I loved writing this novel. I loved that I wrote honestly and tried new things (like having a real villain, lots of conflict, and a climactic moment with just a little falling action instead of chapters and chapters of it). I also loved that I wrote from real experiences I had in middle school that I fictionalized and transformed. These were not easy experiences to think about, but in this end, they become beautiful (at least to me).

I remember a quote I found recently from James Joyce in which he says, "Art does not start as something beautiful, but from experiences that are rough and raw." This novel feels more authentic because of the "rough and raw" and the ways I wrote "close to the bone."

We'll see what happens. I'll keep you posted.