Y is for New YEAR'S Eve Revisions

Debra is working on edits and revisions.

Well, I'm supposed to be working on edits and revisions. Over a month ago I received my first edit for New Year's Eve at The Corral back from my editor. It was accompanied by this note:

I enjoyed this but didn't get the satisfaction I get from your others. In such a short space you weren't able to fully develop the characters. Ideas: More physical contact while decorating in that opening. Maybe everyone sits to eat before the crowd starts arriving--even if it's lunch instead of dinner. Not sure what to suggest. Did you have a beta? Was he/she happy with it as-is?

I did not use a beta reader...I rarely do which is probably something I need to reevaluate and perhaps do more of in the future. It is shorter than my other stories - on purpose - but maybe it's a bit too short. And while it's good to know she really liked my past work, obviously this particular one needs a bit more...something. So I told her I would see what I could do. I also told her I was busy with other things and wanted to do it right and that it would take more than a weekend or a week to figure something out. She said that was fine.

To be honest, I haven't done much with it aside from taking a passing moment or two and asking myself how I'm going to add some oomph and character development to this story. Between the end of the school year and some other projects I've been working on, writing has taken a back seat. (In fact I totally forgot about the release date for Fourth of July at The Corral until it was literally a day away.) This isn't unusual, I feel that my writing career goes in phases of spurts and stops from time to time. And to be honest, I'm okay with that. I always seems to have ideas in my head for stories, but I don't always have the drive to get them down in written format. When I do have the drive, I go full steam ahead.

Yesterday, however, I got a 'checking in' e-mail from my editor asking how it was going. It had been over a month since I'd been in contact with her, so she probably was wondering if I'd dropped off the face of the earth. I told her it was coming slowly (if a standstill can be considered 'slow') but now that summer vacation had officially started I had time to dedicate to the project.

So...today I'm doing a read-through. It's been a while since I've read the story, so hopefully coming at it with fresh eyes will help me to see opportunities to strengthen the story, more fully develop the characters, and really make it pop. I feel like I know my characters pretty well, since they've been appearing in the other books in the series for a few years now, but obviously a reader picking up this story for a read-alone is going to need a bit more to go on.

And so there's Goal Number One for summer writing.

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Debra
www.debrastjohnromance.com

R Is For Revisions

Jennifer is revising, revising, and revising some more...

People ask me how I manage to write a book—or several. They want to know how I come up with my ideas, how I can actually get them onto the page, and even how I go about getting them published.

The answer, for all of it really, is revising.

Revising is as important, or even more important, than that actual writing. Anyone can come up with an idea. I have a ton of ideas floating around in my head. But to develop those ideas into something that will actually work—that will have a beginning, a middle and an end, with a likeable hero and heroine, with complete plot and character arcs and into something that ends “happily ever after,” takes a lot of revising. Not all ideas are book material and I have to revise a lot of them before I ever write them down.

Once I have that idea, I write. There are lots of distractions—whether from the outside world or my characters—that get in the way. I try to write consecutively, but occasionally, something with happen that prevents that. Or I stop for the day, intending to continue my thought, forget about it, and continue in a completely different direction. Thus, revising what I’ve written when I’ve gotten to “The End,” is essential.

I’m currently playing around with a technique suggested by Roxanne St. Clair. You write the first one hundred pages, then go back to the beginning and revise. You write the next one hundred and fifty pages, go back to the beginning and revise. You then write until the end of the manuscript and once again go back to the beginning and revise. She is a pantser like me, and says that when she first starts writing, she doesn’t have enough of a handle on her characters and this method helps her. So I decided to try it. I’m at page two hundred and have done my second revision—boy, was it necessary! When I get to the end, I’ll see if it was worth it.

Suggestions from my critique partners, whether it’s while I’m writing or once I’ve finished a draft, also force me to revise. Even once I submit my manuscript to my publisher or agent, I still have to revise. Revisions are the only way to polish and make your manuscript as strong as it can be. There’s no such thing as “one and done” when you’re a writer. Most writers I know could polish their manuscript forever; at some point, we all have to force ourselves to stop. But until that point, revisions are essential.

Making More Progress

Debra is pleased with what she's accomplished with her WIP.

This week I had the highlighters, pens, and sticky notes out. I did a read-through of the mss for "One Great Night", marking and noting things along the way. Since then I've gone back and added things to places that needed additions and tweaked things that weren't working, whether it was a phrase or the overall feel of the scene. For the most part, I feel the story is in good shape. Having written it all out of order, I was pleased to find there were only two scenes that needed to switch places.

I also spent some fun research time looking up quotes from Eighties Movies. My characters have a little game they play back and forth. I had left notes on the mss like, 'need a movie quote here', so it was a blast to hunt down just the right one and put it in the context of the story.

Now that all of the hand notations are done, I'll take the mss and transfer the pen markings to the computer version. After that it will be time for 'one-at-a-time' edits: going through the mss using the find function and eliminating and changing certain over-used words. Once that's complete, I'll go through the formatting steps from my publisher. In the meantime, in addition to getting the revisions transferred, I need to be working on a synopsis as well. These used to scare me, but I found a system which gives me a pretty good handle on them.

Then will come the moment of reckoning when I send it off to my editor. The project will be in her capable hands for a while, after which she will hopefully offer me a contract. After which a whole new process will begin.

Fun times!

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Debra
www.debrastjohnromance.com

Family Secrets - coming August 1 - available NOW in paperback from The Wild Rose Press