Tag: passion project

Sigh.

I realized I just don’t feel enough of a push to actually work on my memoir, When I Went Crazy, as I thought I did.

I’m not rushing to the computer to work on it like I did Hurricane Baby last year. I was seriously excited to do that project, and when I wasn’t excited, I was fueled with a grim determination. I WAS going to finish it, and I WAS going to revise it, and I WAS going to sell it whether anyone liked it or not. I had a real drive that pushed me through all the hard work.

And I’m not feeling that right now except about one project–selling my novella, Looking For Home, as a standalone project.

Looking For Home grew out of a scene I had written while floundering around with Hurricane Baby the first time. I had written it in the context of Wendy and Judd’s baby growing up and going looking for Judd when she was a teenager. I didn’t go that direction with Hurricane Baby, but I did think I had written a perfectly serviceable scene. So I dreamed up a new idea for a story about a teenaged couple, Carlton Dixon and Merrilyn Beck, giving up a baby for adoption because Merrilyn was only sixteen–and that baby coming to find Carlton once she got to be a teenager.

I had a really good time writing that story just like I had enjoyed doing Hurricane Baby, with a rich backstory, told with multiple narrators. On the advice of an editor I had asked to help me with it, I cut it down to one point of view and created a novella, which I sold to a publishing house in 2018 as part of an anthology. Well, the rights have reverted back to me, and I want to sell it as a standalone book.

So I’ve been researching publishing houses that publish novellas and sending off to them. But the story has really held up through the years since I wrote it. I don’t see anything that really needs to be changed about it. And if it doesn’t sell as a novella, then I may take it and redo it just like I did Hurricane Baby. Only this one I think I would write as a duopoly or trilogy of novellas in one book. I would harvest the original manuscript to write the story of back-when in Carlton’s point of view, write the intervening story in Merrilyn’s point of view, and leave the current novella in Cassie’s (the teenager) point of view.

(Hm. I will think about that some more.)

But back to my point. If there’s no flame to fan in your heart for a project, maybe it’s not time for you to work on that project. I have No real excitement about going back into those thoughts and feelings right now. So I will wait for the right project to come along. (Or I may have just found it. I’ll keep you posted.)