Are you ready for an update?
I am. I’ve been in editing mode for weeks now and making progress.
Bischoff Black – Book 2:
I have printed out a copy of the first full draft. I have three different highlighters to mark up the manuscript for the next round of edits. How I’m marking it up is by three categories:
- rewrite
- expand/add more
- delete
There is probably other things to focus on, but I only had 3 different highlighter color and I couldn’t think of what else to focus on in this draft. Bk 2 went through a NaNoWriMo month to create first. So it was a basic extended outline of the story. The second round extended the scenes that were stuck in my head. The third round made sure all the scenes flowed cohesively and created a full story. So, now we move on to round four. To me this is the most important edit in my process. Each chapter will fill out and the story will come together. Also, the surprises pop up. Parts of the story I didn’t know where there. I love this part of writing. Often in this draft, the problem areas in the plot suddenly type out onto the computer. This happened in the first book, too. Problem points or plot holes worked themselves out during this edit. I’m excited to see what comes to life in this round.
Historical Fiction – Stand Alone:
While the paper edit is going on, I’m working on my HF book. If you are new here, this book is the first one I ever started to write. It was the genre I was reading at a teenage, and I wrote my own. While teenage me was able to put it all in one notebook (which I still have somewhere), it is a far cry from what would be enjoyable to read. Since it is my first book, I wanted to finish it. Even if it was only for me.
I would say I’m on round 5 or 6 with this draft. Its hard to tell because I’ve been working on it for many years. However, the writing process on this book has been by jumping around adding chapters with ideas/tropes I wanted in the book. I realized that now I needed a good solid read through. So I downloaded a copy to word (doing this stops me from editing/making changes as I read), and I did a full read through. It was humbling because I thought it was nearly complete, but in fact, halfway through the whole story fell apart and scenes were mixed up. I shouldn’t be surprised, seeing as how that was written. It took a few hours, but I moved chapters around, and highlighted the ones that need extra work.
Where I’m at right now, I’m still letting Bischoff Bk2 settle for a bit. Therefore, I’ve spent the last couple weeks focusing on making this story flow from beginning to end. There is going to be a mystery element to this book, and I need to make sure that element is equal to the romantic parts.
I hope to have this book done by end of May and get it off to an editor. Goal is to have it done and published this year. Of course, I want the same goal for Bischoff Bk2, so I may have to look at how to edit faster!!
Thank you for following along.
Happy reading!
