Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Progress Update

All I've accomplished in the last week was to revise the pages that I wrote in my last two sessions. But fortunately, those were really good pages, and my edits only made them stronger. It's hard for me to get chills at something I wrote myself, but this did it for me.

In other news, the holidays take up a lot of time. Actual events are only part of it -- then there's the shopping, planning, etc. And trying to get all my day-job work done before the end of the year, to make sure everyone is happy before I take off a week and a half around Christmas.

Oh, and I came up with a new title for ALDEN RIDGE. I've been searching for a more evocative one for months, struggling with many dimensions of the story/themes, etc. No luck. Then, after yesterday's post at Pub Rants about titles, I finally had the idea to look through proverbs and idioms from various other cultures to see if that sparked anything. Turns out I found a Chinese one that sparked a great title! But right now I'm sitting on it, waiting a few days (or possibly weeks or longer) to make sure this title sticks with me before I go announcing it to the world. So for now, in public, the book is still ALDEN RIDGE. But I'm very excited about the new title (now I've probably hyped it to the point that you'll be disappointed when I do "unveil" it).

2 comments:

Karen Mahoney said...

And he's back! Yay! ;)

Good to hear you're pleased with the pages you've been working on. And I can't wait to hear your new title... I can understand you waiting on it, though. I know the title I want for my YA book - and I have titles for two sequels - but I just want to keep them to myself until I'm ready to query. :)

Christopher M. Park said...

Hey Karen! Yeah, I've been kind of silent and absent for a while, haven't I? Time can really fly sometimes, and it's frustrating to realize how little writing I've gotten done during that period. I can feel a good stretch of strong writing coming on, if only the holidays don't wreck it...

I've had similar thoughts to yours regarding the title. I'm not sure I want to float the title around too much before I am ready to query, just because this one is more unique and something that I don't want someone else to pick up. Not that I'm particularly paranoid in that regard (though it was irritating that a blockbuster movie called "The Guardian" came out just as I was starting to query my ms with the same name. Grr!). It's also nice to have the title be fresher when I'm starting to market the book.