Hi. Hey. I suck at updating this. I’m trying to be as transparent as I can with this writing process, but I get so enveloped in it that I just lose all focus on everything else.
So, here’s the deal. I went through about 4 drafts of the manuscript before finally passing it along to my editor for a developmental edit. I’m anticipating it coming back with a plethora of suggestions, critiques, comments, and so on. That’s par for the course when editing a novel. Putting out the best possible book you can is only possible by tearing the story apart and putting it back together. If it’s still the same after, great. But there’s a good chance you’ll have something quite different. The bones are still there. Maybe even the nervous system. But the skin might look different. The eyes, the ears, the brains. And the only way to do that is to have someone else do it for you. Don’t ever rely on your own eye. It’s called self-publishing, not self-editing.
I love the notes I get back on my developmental edits. I take zero offense, even if I choose not to change something (which happens often if I’m that passionate about something or someone in the story. But, as they say, kill your darlings if necessary). Once I get the manuscript back in a week or so, I’ll go ahead and put together another draft, which will be my sixth (I think) by then. Then, I’ll go over it again (a seventh time), and send it back off for line/copy editing and proofreading. That’s the eighth iteration. Finally, I correct the errors and put the ninth draft into book form. Then I send the book out to some beta reader friends who’ll scour it for anything either of us missed, and that makes my 10th and final draft.
Tedious. Nitpicky. Frustrating, at times. The art of writing a story. And coming from a person who is the antithesis of patient. But, somehow, it’s therapeutic, and I get better and better, patience-wise (and hopefully talent-wise), with every book I put out.
In the meantime, I’m working on my website a bit, working on a trailer for ATTC, and working on a follow up to a previous book – which is what I was doing before I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo last year.
Stay well, good people. Keep those minds open.
Justin