📖 lisa writes stuff issue 🖋️ #36 ‘Cause I’m in too deep

And I’m trying to keep up above my head

May 16, 2024

Dear Internet,

This is going to be a short issue as the only thing I’ve done in the last few weeks is re-work my submission for the Harlequin Romance Includes You contest and sent it back to my editor whose turn around was less than 24 hours. I accepted/rejected her track changes and I’m going to not read it for another few days. I’ve read the same (more or less) 5,000 words so many times, I feel like I can recite it by heart.

Based on her edits, I’m going to have to re-work the rest of story to match that first 5,000 words. I read the other 15,000 words and tweaks need to be made already. I know, I know that for the first draft, you need to just fucking write but I can’t let the first 5,000 be a disconnect from the next 15,000. Once that is cleaned up, I’ll finish the story. While I write fast, I’m giving myself to the end of the summer to finish it before I send it to my editor for the first round of edits before agent submission/self-publishing.

Now, this all this is dependent on how well my story does for the contest. To be honest, to maintain my B+ life, just sending it in is a huge deal for me. If I place or win, that would obviously be fan-fucking-tastic, but I’ll be happy with just submission. I really believe in this story, and I believe it needs to be told. A couple of librarian friends asked me if I have ever read a story, romance or general fiction, where the lead is bipolar. The answer is no. Now, depression or anxiety, yes, that has become more known in the fiction world but not bipolar. (The movie/book Girl, Interrupted is based off a memoir and it deals with women in a psych hospital. The movie fictionalizes the book but not quite the same.)

Next steps: I do not place and Harlequin has no interest in the story. I finish the manuscript, get it as pretty as possible and either publish it myself or send off to agents and have them submit the story for me to the publishers. In addition to Harlequin, Sourcebooks and Kensington take unagented manuscripts under specific instances which includes submissions by marginalized groups and yep, mental illness is a marginalized group.

I have a lot of options. I’ll worry about it later this summer.

This week I need to write a synopsis and query letter for the contest which I’ve never done before. I’m getting help and I asked my editor if she could also edit those docs before submission. I have 15 days from today (May 16) before the contest ends.

I had a video date with Steph this week and I walked her through the novel. My plan is to go through the last few contemporary romances I’ve read, list the main and subplot to understand how the synopsis works. When I was explaining my novel to Steph, I was all over the place which I can’t be for the fucking synopsis. It’s way harder writing the synopsis than writing the damn novel!

So, that’s where I’m at right now with writing. I’ve done work for my business today so I’m blocking a few hours tomorrow to work on the query and the short story for another contest. I originally thought I had to write 8,000 words but the range is 2,000 to 8,000 words so I have some breathing room. My original story, which would be a complement to my novel work in progress, went wildly out of control. I was up to 5,000 out of the 8,000 words and I didn’t even have the hero and heroine meet yet. I really liked what I wrote so that is shelved for another novel or novella.

I need to come up with a new name of my villages/cities that do not include the word “Falls” in it. That’s all overly used in other stories to the point I think if I keep it, it’s beating a horse to death.

Anyway, that’s it for me in this issue. The next issue, May 29^th, should be chock full of anxiety as it is two days before the Harlequin submission end date and three days for another contest.

P.S. The coffee house I’m at is rocking out to jams from the early ‘00s. This week’s subject line is from Sum 41’s “In Too Deep.”

A Most Unreliable Narrator

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