Monday 13 October 2014

October 5 to 11th

Weekly update:

Chapters revised: 9 (of 35)
Days to deadline: 58

Not my best or most promising week but still grinding in the right direction.

The editor's comments have been really useful.  I'm not great at remembering to get inside my character's heads on a regular basis.  I tend to be a mostly visual person, which I have been told would be great if I was writing screenplays, but I want to write novels.  Her notes gently reminding me that it's been awhile since we saw an internal reaction have been invaluable.

I also hadn't realized how much had only been hinted at in the villain sections.  I needed to be more explicit and fight my urge to keep everything a big secret so that people can be surprised.  That urge is the main reason I will never be a mystery writer, even though I love police procedurals and mysteries.  I have to give my readers hints as to what's happening and since I, as a reader, love to be surprised, I end up holding too much back.

Either way, these are still only tweaks for the most part.  I've rewritten three sections to tighten up the plot and keep things active but mostly I'm just adding little bits here and there.  It still takes me about an hour and a half to two hours to properly revise a chapter but it's proving quite doable.

I've had people question why I've spent money on an editor instead of getting the book up for sale as quickly as possible.  This is the reason: because I can't see past my own blind spots and I'm more interested in putting out a quality book than stroking my ego.  I'd rather put out a few good books than churn out a dozen which I'd be ashamed to claim.

I'm hoping that readers will agree with me.

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