The as-yet-unnamed novel: Progress report

I have been working on an as-yet-unnamed novel from the first draft towards readiness to seek an agent. This is not the first draft novel I have worked on but this is the one that most fully represents what I can do. Thus it will be the novel that will be seen by agents.

The reason for posting about it is to lock in this novel. Now that I have publically said I am working towards getting an agent, I will (hopefully) feel compelled to do that.

The working title (because I had to call it something) was “a novel without a cat in it”.

At present, I am going through chapter-by-chapter looking at sentence length, complexity, and expression. At the end of this process, I show the chapter to my writing group and invite them to rip it to shreds. That feedback then informs what I focus on in the next edit and what else I may look at in later chapters.

I have so far learned that my early drafts use the words “was” and “that” faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar too often. Knowing this, I use the search function and look for unnatural-looking clusters of these words.REwording these sections forces me to find better and more engaging ways to express the ideas of the passage.

That’s it. That’s my report. I am currently working on chapter 4. Ask me about my progress on social media, in person, or in the comments.