Big News!!!!
Okay ya’ll just like I promised on my insta here I am ready to share some amazing news with you. My family journey with cancer is finally entering the epilogue. We received TWO clear scans which means one more and it will be smooth sailing. Well I’m writer there no such thing as smooth sailing but the waters are looking way less choppy. We got the news just in time for Summer, which is my favorite season. I love the sun, the short shorts, and the long day and now that Summer is practically over and spring has come and gone my motivation to finish the 2nd draft of my manuscript has kicked into high gear.
The warmer seasons were the warm up and now it’s time to get down to the nitty gritty in terms of editing. Since I’m deeper into the editing game I wanted to take some time to reflect on what the Spring and Summer season did for me in terms of my writing.
The Spring of Self Evaluation
Let’s talk about things I wish I knew before deciding I wanted to write a book. First, editing is time consuming and soul crushing process, it is a painful process of self-evaluation of not only yourself, your writing and yout writing ability but also of yoursef. Who am I as a writer? Who are my characters? What am I really trying to say? Is it coming across? How do I make it come across? It never really ends, for every question I answer another springs up in its place. That said I’m glad at the stage that I can answer any of these questions at all. Last winter I struggled to even know what the questions I needed to ask myself were. It’s a slow process.
I alot of the answers to these question not only in self evaluation of myself and my writing, but in reading other books.
I took a lot more care to read this past Spring. To find out what kind of books I enjoy and why I enjoy those types of books. Why do I burn through some books in days. Why do some books take weeks for me to finish? Why do some books cause me to jump up and scream at the pages while others just don’t stir that type of fire inside me? What is it about a book that puts me off or draws me in? I’ve been on the hunt for these feelings while reading and searching for ways to recreate them in my own story. The goal being to read my book and feel those feelings for myself and hopefully for others to feel the same. I’ll see how well I did when I get some other eyes on my work later in September.
Summer Success?
The gag is I would love to write the next best thing. The book that get everybody talking and makes me a million bucks and sets me up to be the next Tomi Adeyemi. That said at the end of the day the most important thing to me is to write a story that I would enjoy reading. So I went back to basic, I’m writing with pen and paper.
Editing without my digital copy, see here for the tragic tale of how I lost it, has been a pain and a half. I’ve set myself up with a 1000 words a day goal. Somedays I make it somedays I don’t’ but I’m definitely writing more than I have all year. The more I learn about myself in general and as a reader/writer the easier editing my book has become. I used to be scared to try out different things like switching point of views or using journal entries. For some reason I was terrified it would not be well received from readers, then I asked myself what I like to read and what enjoyed, put on my grown women panties and tried out some of the things I was scared to. It was fun playing with different styles and though I’m not 100% committed to all of the ideas I’m testing out it’s helping me grow as a writer and that’s the whole point of editing, to improve my writing and myself as a writer.
Looking forward to the end of Summer I really want to get at least the first three chapters of my manuscript edited and refined for peer review for start of Fall. I recently finished chapter two and am working to polish it up for other eyes. It’s scary but I’m just happy to be moving forward at all. In putting this my this week in writing series in gold (in case you hadn’t noticed) to focus up but it will be back after peer edits start. How was the Spring/Summer season for you in terms of writing? What is the hardest part of editing for you. Tell me in the comments below and have a happy Summer! Good luck writing out there!
