NaNoWriMo Next Steps

I've written a 100K+ word rough draft of Exodus, my novel.  Here's an advice page from nanowrimo.org: Now What?

There is still more to be written, and I guess I'll write it now.  My next plan is to print to whole thing out and go over it with a red pen, scissors, and tape, and then retype it into my AlphaSmart NEO2.

Lather, rinse, repeat...  as they say where I work.

Woody Allen actually types on a typewriter, then cuts his papers apart, and staples them back together.

Anyway, I don't want to let this languish, or die.

I have another novel that I've been thinking about for decades in the chamber for next November.  Possible working title (just thought of it) could be The Selenian Wars, or possibly Claudia.

I also have a hundred or more pages written on a couple of other novels: Between Laughing and Crying (other working title: Sabine) and The Little Ant with the Criminal Mind: A Faerie Story about Fitting In.  I mean to finish writing both of them (Sabine first) and get down to editing.  There may be excerpts of both of these at the beginning of this blog.  I guess a goal is to get a good draft of Sabine, possibly both by next NaNoWriMo.

In the interval, I also need to research all of my notes over the past few years for story and character ideas for The Selenian Wars.  I came up with a lot of jargon and character names.  Special language is one specialty of Exodus in draft, by the way, and will no doubt be part of The Selenian Wars.

Right after NaNoWriMo, I started writing a children's book, Miri and the Saturnian.  I watched the movie Elf again, and children's book publishing is a theme there, and an idea just came to me.  It's kind of a variation on Exodus.

Exodus in draft is pretty "intense."  There is a lot of sensuality. Practically no violence of any kind, however.  It might not be for everybody, so I'm wondering about proofreading and "workshopping" it at writing groups, and whether many people (Americans) would get stuck on the sex and not be able to see through to whether the writing and story are any good.

Anyway, I have this crazy idea that I can get Miri into a reasonable state and start getting it out there, maybe in a few weeks.

Once I get drafts of Miri and Exodus together, I guess the next step is to find an agent.  At this point (actually before this point) my experience and knowledge about what to do run out.  The sidewalk ends.  However, I have several friends and acquaintances who have knowledge and experience in these things, so hopefully I can get help from then and then the proof of the pudding that is my books shall be in the eating thereof, I suppose.  Meanwhile, I shan't be counting my eggs until they're in the pudding.