Book 1 and Book 2

I finished the book. I finished it three times and will probably finish it once more before I get an agent, and then perhaps a few more times before it is ever published. For all I know, I will have finished my twenties by then. Such is the way of publishing, or so I hear. The working title of the book is Reasons to Hold On, which sounds like a book that would make good use of lists but sadly there are no lists in it. Yet. Hmm.

But at any rate, Reasons is about a girl named Alex who has had a rough summer, only to have it made worse when she accidentally cuts her arm. Her parents take this as a suicide attempt and send her off to an estranged relative, seemingly giving up any hope of fixing her themselves. Alex is, of course, pretty peeved and has no problems expressing her anger to just about anyone. But eventually, as she makes friends and begins to feel comfortable around people again, she realizes the decision was a good one. She sees that she doesn't have to hide herself or her secrets because now there are people around to support her. Of course, the book wouldn't be interesting if Alex wasn't miserable most of the time so don't worry, she is.

I also managed to avoid the boy and girl get together, have an argument likely over a misunderstanding or poor communication, break up, spend a chapter or so away from each other, but come back together in the end because they found the words that somehow didn't exist before. I understand why this happens in almost every YA book I read; I definitely wanted the point where everyone was mad at Alex and she was feeling completely alone. It just makes things more tense and terrible, just the way we humans like it. But I also keenly remember the aggravation each time I read it in a book - which is a lot because I've been reading YA nonstop. There may be things to find annoying but it won't be that, sir!

I've begun querying the book; we'll see if and when I hear back. But it's exciting to be in that part of the process at least.

Thanks to NaNoWriMo (I think I got the capitalization right there), I am beginning my 2nd book tomorrow. I've been having ideas for it nonstop; hopefully that keeps going. I think having written a book already I'm a bit more prepared for this. I'm ready to let sections and even chapters suck in the name of getting to the end. I know already that I'll likely have to rewrite the book three more times or so. I'm not nearly as prepared as I like to be, but that's part of the fun/stress/terror. 

This post has gone on too long so I guess I'll give the synopsis of book 2 in my next post. See you in 2 months or so! (hopefully that's a joke.)