I recently celebrated my 1 year anniversary on twitter. And in doing so, I realize that means that I have been editing my book for just over two years now (has it really been that long?). I’m currently on roughly the sixth draft of it. And good God am I sorry to anyone who read early drafts of it, and thank you so much for your patience with me. I’ve had so many wonderful people look at it, give me feedback, and steer me in the right direction.
I told myself that I really wanted to start querying last summer and the months have just flown by. I’ve found more and more problems - plugging one leak, just to discover another. Somehow through all of this, I’ve actually made progress.
But this begs the question, what are you doing, Cheyanne? And will you ever finish?
1. I’m rewriting for voice.
This book is my first foray into writing in first person, something I discovered does not come naturally to me. It’s been a lot of focus, a lot talking to myself and a lot of feedback, but I finally settled on a voice for my character and decided how distant I want her to be as a narrator. The book has always been written in first past, but before it had much more immediacy to it. I’ve grown up narrator Kalina and have her more reflecting on the events. And I think I’ve finally got a good grasp on the voice.
2. I’m cleaning my scenes up.
I’m starting to think I’m the queen of having pointless conversations in my writing. I love dialogue. I love writing dialogue and I love it when my characters bicker. This all became too much and I’m working on making all scenes more relevant to the plot, (really trimming there), while trying to balance all that dialoguey goodness that I’m so proud of.
3. I just made a minor plot adjustment that will impact all three books I have written so far.
This is the big one. It’s a recent decision that I wasn't sure on at first, but as I see how much it’s going to improve the story, I can’t not do it. I don’t want to rewrite all three books, but I’ll do it if it makes things better. The thing I’m most excited about about this plot change is that it makes Kalina a much more active MC and it makes her big decision moment at the end of the book so much more powerful.
So, while I don’t have a real idea when I’m going to finish, this is what I'm working diligently on. I’m aiming for the end of the summer, and if the chapters that I’ve ‘finished’ so far are any indication, I think the product that I’m going to have may be ready for a few beta readers (and the interest in beta reading that has been expressed so far has warmed my heart so much.)
Anyway, that’s my writing update for those of you who are interested. :)
I’d also love to hear where everyone else is at for their writing projects, so feel free to drop a comment below! :)