Goodnight, sweet Nora, it's time to go

So I fell off the blogging wagon. I just having felt much like keeping things up-to-date this year. I've been feeling busy and frazzled, and frankly not much like regular writing either. That's the problem with having a job that requires brain-power all day, it frequently leaves me spent by the time I get home. Despite my best efforts, I've been pretty unproductive all around. Hrm. I'm not sure I can honestly say I've put my best efforts into things either, there's been plenty of nights where I've blown off writing or barely made an effort. Where did all my focus go? When I was still just an RA I could pretty easily put an entire night into writing, at least 3 hours, get a minimum of 2,000 words written. Now I'm lucky if I get 1,300. Yesh.

On a related note, I recently received another rejection letter for Nora. She's been to at least a dozen agents and five or six publishers who actually accept unsolicited manuscripts. I fear it's time to put her to bed; that she is unpublishable; that I write too sweetly for YA lit these days. I've had a few people suggest that I should try self-publishing. I'm pretty sure I've written about my reservations regarding self-publishing here before. On top of my concerns that it's not a truly accepted form of publishing (i.e. I think most people still look down on self-publishing as a way for untalented writers to get their books out), I also completely lack a sufficient social network to turn a profit. My circle of acquaintances are small, and I don't feel comfortable talking about my work to about 95% of them, let alone try to market/advertise my book to them.

I don't know what to do. I've considered just posting the manuscript here, a few pages at a time every week or maybe twice a week. Of course, posting Nora here, freely, with little-to-no exposure doesn't really seem like a great plan either, but I don't have to pay anything to do this (self-publishing isn't free from what I've seen). She's reasonably well edited, and complete. Maybe a few people with stumble upon her. It would at the very least be better than letting her waste away unread and unloved on my computer hard drive. I could cross my fingers and hope some editor somewhere will stumble upon her, but I doubt that's likely to happen either.

I should probably make a few changes to the title and description of my blog, but expect to see chapters of Nora appear here soon--unless somebody out there has a great alternative suggestion for what I can do.

Ciao,

Andrea