2022/04/27 - Revision Has Begun!

Sorry for missing another month! There wasn't much to update in March regarding the novel (plus I was moving, so I was crazy busy). However, this month brings big news!

The First Draft is COMPLETE.

It's 95,000 words (about 320 pages) of unpolished, confusing, and contradictory rough draft, baby, but that's what happens when you shift genres every 2 chapters and attempt to make that make sense in a larger narrative. I have never finished a novel draft before, so this is incredibly exciting for me. I'm about to begin the first revision. Here's how I'm planning to go about it:

• Take several weeks away from the book to make it fresh in my mind again. (DONE)

• Print off some copies of the thing. (DONE)

• Read through for each character to ensure consistent personalities, relationships with other characters, and story arcs. (DONE)

• Read through for overall plot consistency/eliminate plot holes. (DONE)

• Read through to even out exposition, sensory description, and world building. (DONE)

• Make notes during each read through, then implement the changes.

Then, I will hand this second draft over to my alpha/beta readers to see what kinds of feedback they have for me. This will help me determine if the story is impacting the reader the way it I want. I will implement their feedback, do a final line-edit for grammar errors and style, then BOOM: final draft to send out to agents and whatnot.

No idea how long this process might wind up taking. This continues to be a huge learning process for me, and at this point everything I'm doing is my first time doing it. I've been writing for a long, long time, but a project of this scale is vastly different than an RTA script or a short story or whatever. It's been an exciting two years working on this draft, and I'm even more excited to see it start to shine.