May 19, 2021
Day 228, Week 32
- Words: 77,189
- Revised Words v2: 55,725
- Emotional State: Am I breaking my book?
The Book
The book has started to have a presence of its own. I’m thinking about it capital letters now. The Book. I’ve been chewing on it for days – 228 to be exact – and it feels like it will never go away.
But it will. June 25th is my day to turn it into copyediting. Six short weeks away.
In those six weeks, I have to finish this draft. Revise the next draft. Get beta reader feedback. Implement the beta reader feedback. Refine the plot point issues, fix the language, determine what goes in the glossary and continue to market myself.
When I lay it out like that, it freaks me out. But when I take week size chunks of it – 10k words this week, revise 3 already reviewed chapters – it doesn’t feel as crazy. It still feels too short. Too rushed. I want more time and I know if I have more time, I won’t actually do more work on it.
And so, I’ll continue to refine it and tweak it. I’ve been working on the subtler plot points. Okay, so the plot point that isn’t she finds a clue and investigates it, but is the do these moments lead up enough to this big blowout? Or, put a better way, have I created enough momentum for what happens next?
Usually not.
In one of the chapters I reworked this week, when I read what was there I thought – this is not the final version I created. I distinctly remember removing sentences and paragraphs that were still there when I reread it. It was as if my work wasn’t saved. But when I looked at the version history, I hadn’t made those changes. Am I dreaming that I did?
In the other chapter, I cut so much out of the fight to squeeze two chapters into one, I seem to have lost the oomph of it. It was a disaster. Good thing I fixed it…but now I realize I need to fix it some more because it’s missing more of the details I worked into the earlier chapters.
Oh my gods! (As my MC would say – I’m not a polytheist).
Pacing and tension are hard, especially when you’re knee deep in the weeds, pulling apart your precious words, while also refining the word you chose. I think I’ve reworked the scene in the right way to get there, but who knows? My current editor doesn’t focus on the overall picture. She focuses on the words on the page – can we cut this, this is clunky, let me rewrite this part for you.
The story refinements are left to me. Which makes sense, since it is, after all, my baby.
And I think I may be mangling it.
Life & Marketing
As I mentioned in last week’s catch up (doesn’t that sound either like something you put on food OR better than whinefest?), I started cover research. And boy am I glad I did.
Because I received a note on Monday that I need to have my cover brief done by Friday and it requires comp research (comparative titles). I planned to have multiple posts for my author fan community of the chapter titles and then a few comp covers to promote a discussion. Yeah, that got jammed into two posts and I don’t even think anyone said anything at all about them.
Okay. We’re heading in to whine territory, but is it too much to ask to give me some idea of when stuff will hit? Just saying “May” and then springing it on me to get done in a week doesn’t seem like an organized system. I would’ve done this part much earlier. In fact, because I took the initiative, I’m in a much better position than I would’ve been.
Sigh.
I also realized that I need to get a better idea of what my brand is and how it should look, feel and be. I can’t do anything about tone – it’s already out there. So another task on my list is to focus a bit on branding and narrowing down what it looks like for me.
The biggest issue with this is that I am doing multiple things with my author name – writing books, blogs (on two platforms) on books and writing, book reviews, weekly journals, etc. How do you take all of that and make it a cohesive brand? I don’t know, but I aim to find out.
Whenever I get the chance to do so.
To read more of my weekly whine fests and writing journal journey posts, click here.