Of Course I'm Writing!

And we can all pretend like I'm not avoiding editing, for just a few minutes, yes? Ok then.

For the past two months, I've buckled down on finishing my current draft. I'm pleased to say the end is near.

At least for this draft.

What, you think a book is done in only 2-3 drafts? Oh, no, gentle reader, it is not. A book takes as many drafts as you, your agent, the publisher, and the vampire hamsters chasing you demand.

I'll have this draft finished in just over a week. Then it's out to a friend of mine to read for story inconsistencies.

Then, the next round of editing - fixing any story errors (which shouldn't have any, I hope), and editing for word usage. That should take about another month, and if I'm really lucky, less.

Then agent hunting, which will culminate in more edits.

If/when the book sells, more edits.

Then the vampire hamsters demand their share of the plot. Let's just say there are a lot of steps.

Blackout Over

My blackout weekend went extremely well, and I’m pleased with my novel progress. I didn’t get 30k written like I’d originally hoped because I ended up spending more time with the executive summary than I anticipated. This is a good thing, though, because it means that this rewrite is concise and will get a lot more done with a lot less deletage down the road. The writing hang-ups are done, banished by a roadmap to needed changes to produce the end result.

I finished 10k and a really detailed summary. Rewriting sections that sucked also took longer than I expected.

The best part is feeling excited and motivated about working on Devil’s Tongue again. I can’t wait to get this rewrite done so I can go though again to start fiddling, because after fiddling comes beta readers/submission time.

For those who’re having problems wrapping their minds around their project and are stuck in a rut, here are two great posts on how others handle their rewrites by Lady Glamis and Liana Brooks. For me, rewrites haven’t been an issue because I’ve never had to rewrite a novel before – it’s a totally different process than a short story. However, when you have 90k project (give or take), you have to combine both logic and creativity for a huge stretch, and that’s hard if your two sides of your brain don’t want to collaborate. I found with this that I had to do some mental bargaining to get my ducks in a row.

I’m still participating in the Writing Throwdown, although I’m going to revise my original goal now that I’ve got a different plan in implemented.

Jess – I know you can’t wait to read it. You’re going to love the changes I made.

Promised Facebook post will be either tomorrow or Wednesday, barring a visit from Murphy.

Question about Rewrites

Ok, so I'm knee-deep in revising my first novel draft. Not only do I need to clean up on a grammar level, I have many significant storyline revisions. The joys of rereading and realizing how much you need to change to make a story work.

I digress. I'm wondering if it's useful to even bother with grammar clean-up when I'm changing most of the story around anyways. I feel like I could work through and change the story to what it's supposed to be, then work on clean-up and it would be faster rather than letting grammar games bog me down in the middle of a rewrite.

Thoughts?