I have a folder full of novels I’ve started and never finished. Maybe someday. However, I do have one novel, the only one, that I did finish. I can’t even remember when I started writing it. Probably four or five years ago. I’ve rewritten, revised, and done a “final polish” on the story, over and over and over.
It was finally accepted and put under contract by a small publishing house. I say ‘finally,’ but I have to admit it’s the only place I’ve ever sent it. They had it for over two years, and nothing was done. Maybe I was too impatient, but I finally asked for, and was granted, my rights back.
Instead of immediately sending it out somewhere else, I started another round of revisions. And I discovered something. I was changing things back to the way I had originally had them. Could that be right?
I was leafing through some old copies of Romance Writer’s Report (RWR) and saw an ad from Ninth Moon and a quote from Rabindramath Tagore. (1913 winner of the Nobel prize in literature) that struck a chord in me: “I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung.”
Time to stop stringing my instrument, time to stop re-revising. My novel goes out one more time this week so I can go on to some of the other stories in my file and in my mind.
