Cake disasters

Progress on the novel continues apace. It still feels a bit like the terrible cakes I bake, however: soggy in the middle. A friend suggested I cover it with icing, which is what I usually do to hide my real-life cake disasters, but sadly it doesn't work quite as well with books. Even if the icing is metaphorical. Speaking of which, have you visited Cake Wrecks? I just love the sadistic pleasure of looking at professional cakes gone wrong.

Anyway, I had better get back to work - I want to hit 74,000 words before I visit a friend's writers' group tonight. There are a couple of writing posts lined up for later in the week, when I have a bit more time, and I'm looking forward to posting them. I'd just like to reiterate that I don't pretend to be an enormous expert on the writing and publishing process, but rather am trying to share what I've learned. Everything I post about is something that I have struggled with and have had to solve in one way or another, and I write about each subject in the hope that it will prove helpful.

Polka dots, awards and impatience

I am reading 'What is the What' by Dave Eggers (he of 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius' fame). It is amazing so far, and well-deserving of all the accolades heaped on it. It tells the story of a Sudanese refugee, a man who really exists - but the story is a novel, not a biography, peopled with composite characters and imagined events as well as the real. A really brave project to undertake, I think. It reminds me that I also really want to read 'The Other Hand' by Chris Cleave, which is about a Nigerian asylum-seeker in London. Have any of you read it yet?

I so admire these writers and the subjects they tackle, and I want to be that kind of a writer too - Nanowrimo (well, cheating Nanowrimo that I have started already) book excepted, because that one is for fun. Although an interesting element has crept in unintentionally - the character who appeared in the text the other day is a Korean student, and the way Asian students are treated here in Christchurch has started to emerge as a strong theme in the book. I am starting to get gradually more and more excited about the book I'm writing when I finish the Masters, though - the points of view I'm using are going to be really interesting and challenging, I think.

Today is a significant day - eight weeks since I sent out the first batch of queries to agents. Generally you don't hear from agents until at least eight weeks have passed; a lot of the agencies ask authors not to nag - er, I mean, inquire - about their queries until eight weeks have elapsed. I'm not going to follow them up yet, though ... the Frankfurt Book Fair was last weekend, so they would all have been flat-out busy with that, and they may only just have had a chance to look at the manuscript. I'll wait a couple more weeks. Even though it is driving me insane. INSANE. Sorry.

Thank you for bearing with me through this long and rambling post. I hope all you Kiwis had a good first day back at work!