In for a Penny

I sent submissions to seven agents. One rejection so far and, realistically, the probability is rejections from the rest too. I don't say this out of self-deprecation or false humility, just an awareness of the numbers game involved.

In the meantime, I'm writing. The work in progress is making headway, but I find myself looking at a hefty m/s at the end of it. My general view is that the m/s should be as short/long as it needs to be and bloat should be excised without mercy, but even allowing for that it still looks like a lengthy story. My plan was/is to have three stories intertwine; the first of these is drafted and has had a rough revision, but is still 10,000 words longer than I anticipated. I thought about changing the plan and making it two intertwined stories to make the wordcount manageable, but this does thematic damage to what I'm trying to pick at in the subtexts. So I think I'm going to go for the full thing and let it go where it goes before a brutal revision.

More generally, all my stuff exists only in the form of working/revision prints (that will eventually get shredded) or out there in the cloud. I think I'm going to format and print my earlier stuff and put it into ring binders so at least some evidence of it exists.