Thursday, March 16, 2006

Revisions revisited

So there's a call for YA submissions right now at Carolrhoda Books, but they have to be postmarked by March 27. Which is, um...11 days from now. I'm trying to decide if I should try to revise my YA novel by then and submit it. It seems crazy, since it needs a major overhaul & I've theoretically been trying to revise it for three years, but then, I wrote the first draft in 17 days, so it should be technically possible. And I have fantastic critique notes to guide me this time, so I have more idea what I want to do with it now than I have since I wrote it. What it would take is the mindset, and I'm not sure if I'm up for that or not. When I wrote it, it became the only thing on my mind for those 17 days, and most other responsibilities went by the wayside. I don't know if I can do that now--it's not like I have a lot on my plate, but I have a lot to do today & tomorrow, so that already throws me off. But part of me thinks it would be a really good exercise, even if I don't finish in time for this round of submissions, just to make me finally buckle down & work on it in earnest! I don't think I've touched it in a year.

Silly retro musing of the day: Yesterday I heard the Tears for Fears song "Pale Shelter," and I heard a synthesizer noise that I thought sounded just like the one in No Doubt's cover of "It's My Life" by Talk Talk. I played the Talk Talk song to see if it was the same noise, and lo & behold, that noise isn't in it. So, did No Doubt take that noise from the Tears for Fears song? Or am I completely wrong about it being the same sound? I don't have the No Doubt version to check with. Ah well.

1 comment:

Cynthia Leitich Smith said...

Good luck with your revision and submission! In case it helps, I have a recent interview with Carolrhoda Editorial Director Shannon Barefield on my Cynsations blog; see the March 11, 2006 post.