# OF WORDS WRITTEN THIS WEEK: 6,899
Somehow, during the course of the week, my priorities completely shifted, though not necessarily for the worse. The Good: I revised the synopsis for GLOW again, and I finished Chapter 1 of THE GHOST WRITER. The Bad: I did not write another chapter in SHADOW, nor did I work on the outline for GLIMMER.
However, I got a hell of a lot of work done on THE GHOST WRITER and I’m pretty darn delighted about that. It’s a story within a story. The main character, Tessa James, is writing strange letters in her sleep. They’re diary entries telling the tale of Ava Dubois, a house actress from 1935 at the theatre where Tessa works. Tonight, I completed Ava’s story.
In other news, I’m at a bit of an impasse with SHADOW. I want to write more, but I hesitate. If I’m lucky enough to obtain representation for GLOW (and I know it’s a big “if” but I’m keeping my fingers crossed), the agent or editor will no doubt request changes. They may be major, they may be minor. The problem is, the next three books in the saga all stem from the trouble stirred up in GLOW and certain changes may affect the course of the story arc. And then I’d be back at the drawing board.
On the other hand, I may never get representation for GLOW because it is my first novel and first novels only very rarely get published. It’s a harsh reality, but there it is. The only way to get around it is to keep writing and keep learning. So that’s what I’m doing. It’s rather tricky with crossed fingers.
Random Fun Fact: Ghost stories scare the bejesus out of me. I don’t watch horror movies if I can avoid it, yet I’m up until all hours of the night writing about phantoms in a theatre very much like the one in which I worked. Needless to say, I’m not sleeping much.
Next week’s goals:
- Write two chapters in THE GHOST WRITER (or SHADOW—depending on my mood)
- Submit my query letter to the Query Shark for shredding.