This week I hit a new milestone on my journey as an author. I finished the first draft of my second novel which I’m calling ‘Reunion of the Heart’.
It’s been a lot of fun to plot and then write and I’m looking forward to sharing it with the world. 🙂 But as the title of this post suggests, it’s not finished yet. Those of you who are writers will recognise that I need to edit, edit, edit before I release it. And of course I need to have other, dispassionate eyes on it so that I can make it the best that it can be.
So at some point I’ll be putting out a request for beta readers, but NOT YET! There’s lots that I need to work on by myself first. I may well tweak scenes and/or insert scenes. I realise that as a story it does need a lot of tightening up. I feel like there’re potentially a lot of holes in the plot, things I haven’t caught yet in my writing process.
Yes, I know that’s where beta readers come in, but I want to finish reading it all through first as my initial edit. I want to make sure I’ve ironed out any obvious mistakes before I (fearfully) hand it over to be read by other people for the first time. That’s a scary process, for sure – handing over your precious WIP to be scrutinised by other eyes for the first time.
If you’re a writer, I’m sure you’re familiar with that feeling. You desperately want your WIP to be read by other people… and yet at the same time you’re scared ****less at the thought of other people who aren’t you reading and potentially being critical of your work.
But it needs to be done and so I’m working towards that point when I can finally hand it over to some generous people to read and make comments on. I want to be the best writer that it’s possible for me to be. I feel I’m improving and growing in confidence as a writer all the time. As I’ve said before, the online community of writers has transformed the way I write and my confidence in myself.
So thank you once more. And I’ll keep you all posted as to my novel’s progress.
By the way… are any of you working on editing? How are you finding it? I’d love to have your comments. 🙂
Elaine Jeremiah 
Editing is a beast! I think I am on my fourth round of edits: round one with me, one after betas and CPs, a professional editor, and bam back to me again! Good luck, I wish you well:)
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Thank you! It’s a long slow process, but it truly is worth it in the end. 🙂
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I just finished my 2nd draft and I’m editing to fix inconsistencies, etc before sending it out to beta readers. It’s not bad right now, but that’s because writing the first draft was ABSOLUTELY HIDEOUS. Six months of hell. Everything after that HAS to be better. 🙂
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Absolutely. You sound like you’re in a similar situation to me. I just know that there’s gonna be so much I need to change/add. It’s nowhere near done yet. But it will be. One day. 🙂
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Woo, congrats on getting it to that point!
I just finished going through the second draft of AMCF on Saturday. There are so many post-it notes through it that I have to act upon now, so I’m feeling a bit daunted and haven’t really made a start yet. Tomorrow, maybe?
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Tomorrow indeed – yes that’s a little like how I feel! When you say post-it notes, do you mean physical, actual ones on a manuscript or something on Scrivener? Just wondered…
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Real ones! I got this draft printed and bound (just cheaply, it’s pretty crappy spiral binding but it works) so I could highlight and scribble and post-it. It feels good to have that visual of “yes, I’ve definitely done work on it, I can see it right there!”
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Oh brilliant, good for you. That’s a great idea – it’s so much easier noticing mistakes etc on paper I think. You know I really must get my hubby to do me a bound copy of ‘The Inheritance’ as I’ve got some friends who’d like to read it and they don’t have Kindles.
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Think of editing as the challenging but fun part – shaping your novel into something even better that’s ready to be unleashed on the world! Well done for getting that first draft written – quite an achievement!
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Good philosophy Kate! I actually don’t mind editing too much – it can be fun to take a fresh look at your writing and see if/how you can improve on some things. And thanks for the congrats it is an achievement for me to have (semi) finished my book. 🙂
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