I’m Done-Not!

Jennifer finished her first drafts.

I’m done, I’m done, I’m done! I finally finished both manuscripts that I’ve been working on forever. One is a standalone contemporary romance and the other is the second in my Jewish romance series.

Happy dance.

But now the real work begins, of course. Editing. Believe me, there is going to be a lot of that.

As I was writing, I ran into a number of problems with both manuscripts. I wanted to get them finished, however, so I pushed through the problems, in some cases leaving big “FIX THIS” notes in places. There are plot holes that need filling in. There are complete about-faces in motivation or character development that require a lot of work. I knew that as I was writing and I knew I’d have to do some major rewriting.

The thought of revising at the time was enough to make me not want to continue writing, so I decided that I’d just finish the darn thing and then go back and fix everything. Because of life interfering and because I often switched between manuscripts, there were times that I forgot about certain elements in a story, only to remember much later that they needed to be there.

My Jewish romance takes place around the holiday of Passover, but there’s very little about the holiday in the book.

I need to fix that.

My hero’s backstory changed halfway through the story, influencing everything that comes afterwards.

I need to fix that.

The middles sag.

I need to fix that.

But at least the first drafts are done. Right now, I’m reading through the standalone, looking for major issues—plot holes, characters that get dropped, etc. I’ll go back and fix them and then do the finer editing work. I hope to have this one done by February (doubtful).

I have some great editing tips I learned at the writer’s conference I went to back in October. I’m looking forward to making use of them on these manuscripts. I’ll let you know how it goes.