Just a Few Thoughts

The revision and editing process for my novel is turning out to be more laborious than I bargained for. First I needed to fix the plot--streamline it, make sure all the conflicts came to a conclusion of sorts. It involved a lot of index cards (I summarized each scene on a card so I could get perspective on the overall story), a hand sore from writing, and quite a bit of glaring at my computer screen wishing the story would fix itself. Eventually, though, I got that done.

Now I'm on to more intricate work which, I must admit, tests my patience. I constantly have to look up words to make sure I used them correctly, switch words around, smooth out clunky sentences, fix the rhythm of individual scenes and paragraphs. I discovered that in the rough draft of my manuscript, the word "just" occurs nearly four hundred times. That's four hundred "just"s out of a total of roughly 98,000 words. I just justed myself crazy! I also used the word "obviously" 20 times, which I think is obviously just too much.

So I slog through my novel, one paragraph at a time, analyzing, comparing, rewriting, second guessing myself, wishing I had more patience, and trying to convince myself that it will never be perfect.

I've learned a lot about my writing habits and where I need to improve (I keep hearing the voice of my eighth grade English teacher in my head. She composed a dirge for "dead" verbs that she didn't want us to use in our writing.) I'm also losing patience because reading through my novel makes me itch to write the rest of the story. I'm planning a series of at least four books featuring the same main character. But it's going to be so much work! Whine. Whine. Whine.

While I muddle through the revision process, I eagerly await feedback from my beta readers, and I hope they don't point out anything super major that requires a total remodel of my manuscript. My goal was to get this beasty done by the end of October, but now I'm thinking I may have to push my deadline back a little. It'll definitely be done by the end of the year, even if it means I have to self-publish a wreck of a book.

Well, we'll see how things go.

That's it for today's ramble. I'm not sure if anything I just wrote has a point to it.