The Quiet Before the First Read Through

Photo credit: cmmccorkle2005 on Flickr
It's New Years Eve when I'm writing this, and on my side of the world there are a little less than seven hours left of 2016. It seems kind of especially fitting, then, that my not-writing month-long break is coming to a close too.

I've been thinking a lot this month about what project I want to dive into first. I have two foremost options right now: a first draft I wrote over the summer and haven't looked at since, and the first draft I wrote for NaNoWriMo. The project calling me more and more as of late is the one I haven't looked at in months, so in all likelihood that's where I'll start, but right now I'm in that moment of before. That breath as you stand at the tip of the diving board and peer down uncertainly at the water below.

I'm not unfamiliar with this process, but the pre-first read through moment tends to be one with a lot of writerly anxiety. For me, the biggest concern is the possibility that I might read it and dislike it so much I won't want to revise—which has happened in the past and made me move on to another manuscript without working on it anymore. But though that hasn't happened in a while, the possibility that it might happen again is always there, always making this moment of Before kind of shaky.

But it's also exciting, too, because there's the other possibility—that I'll fall in love with the project all over again and get energized to revise. That I'll have a concrete direction to go in and a new project to send to my CPs and eventually my agent. That I'll have a new possibility for publication completely unrelated to my current contracted projects.

The quiet of Before is full of possibilities. And while it can be a little intimidating, ultimately, it's a good thing. And it's something I'm more than ready to jump into once again.

What projects are you gearing up for or currently working on? 

Twitter-sized bite: 
Author @Ava_Jae talks about the uncertain moment before your first read through. (Click to tweet)

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