So here’s a quick-and-dirty account of my progress so far:
Like a lot of people, I started writing fiction in high school and by the time I was seventeen. I’d produced 60k of a bad, untitled YA thing. Okay, it wasn’t all bad—it’s how I learned how to think about character and voice, but more importantly, it’s how I learned to type. At this point, I certainly wasn’t considering publication and was very clear in my own mind that this was a “practice novel.”
Then I went to college and produced 40k of a bad, untitled YA thing. (I’m seeing a pattern here.) I also regarded this one as a practice novel. It was characterized by imaginative, lyrical prose, relatively functional characterization, and absolutely no plot.
Post-college, I decided that some discipline was in order and I wrote On Earth, a contemporary fantasy with demons and no real target audience. But it was 110k of polished manuscript and I wrote a query letter and a synopsis, and between the revising and the preparation and the research, it officially took the story out of practice-mode and into real/live aspirations-mode.
Now I’m working on draft 1.5 of a contemporary YA fantasy with gritty litfic overtones. Think Tithe meets Under the Wolf, Under the Dog? There must be something wrong with me, because I’m already starting to look forward to the query process again.
On-going projects include the preliminary stages of a YA paranormal romance, and a sequel to On Earth. Lately, I’ve been trying to come up with a strategy to make the sequel a stand-alone, because honestly, I’m ridiculously taken with my demons-in-rural-Oklahoma storyline and would love to pursue it, regardless of the On Earth situation.
Brenna Yovanoff 
What about the memoir, eh? That’s a whole ‘nother full manuscript down. I do see a pattern in your resume, though, and it sounds like publication is definitely next on the list!
You know, I thought about that memoir draft, but it turned into a slippery, slippery slope :) If I count it, then what about the kajillion short stories, and if I count those, what about all the nonfiction, or the academic papers, the poems?
Suddenly, the fact that I’ve published exactly two short stories looks very tiny against the sheer number of words I’ve committed to paper.
. . . okay, yeah, I need to get on the ball with this whole submitting thing.
You officially have a demon fetish. It’s all right. You write them well.
Oh, I don’t deny the demon fetish–and Raymie’s so much more fun to write than Daphne. Now I just need to figure out the logistics of making it work as a stand-alone . . .
Aww, but I’d argue you need Daphne to prove something about Raymie.
That’s actually my biggest stumbling block–the fact that right now, half the good stuff about Raymie is her backstory.
She has BACKSTORY!!!???
Oh, now I’m just mad that I didn’t get to hear it.
Oh, no, no–sorry, I promise I’m not that convoluted. I just mean that she would come to a sequel with backstory from On Earth that’s pretty integral to who she is, as well as a big part of why I think she’s cool in the first place.
Ohhhh . . . I see.