So I finished editing my YA this past Thursday. I’m still reading through it, which I knew would take a while since it’s over 63K. While I was reading, I started looking through my projects to try to figure out what to work on next. I’d originally decided to write Phantom Warriors: Linx. I knew he’d be fun since he’s such a naughty, naughty kitty. I had the story started, but the plot wasn’t fleshed out. So while I was flipping through projects, I came across a werewolf book that I began writing in 2001. I knew I hadn’t finished it, but I’d done a lot of work on it over the years, which included writing down how it should end. On a lark, I decided to read through the manuscript. I got to chapter eight and realized that I still loved the story.
Sure, it needed some cleaning up and organizing. (I seemed to be very fond of super long chapters, when I first wrote this particular book. *ggg) Some of my chapters were so long that I thought I must’ve missed the chapter headings. LOL! Anyway, I realized that I’d done a ton of work on this book a couple of years ago, so it was a much cleaner copy than I remembered. As I was reading through it, I started to fall in love with the characters again. Since I wrote it so long ago, it’s evident that my style has changed a lot. It’s a little melodramatic, but I still like it. I almost wish I could get some of this particular style back. I’ve obviously edited much of it right out of my writing. (Let this be a lesson to you newbie writers. There is such a thing as incorporating too much writing advice.)
Anyway, I’m slowly working my way through the book. (It was sitting at 46K when I started.) I think by the time I’m finished the book will be at 55 to 60K in length. I am going to try to get it finished within the next two weeks. The cover is almost ready. Once it’s done, I’ll put it up with a blurb and a short excerpt. This story has been in the back of my mind for a very long time. It’ll be nice to finally wrap it up and set it free.
Hope everyone had a nice holiday weekend.
Woot! Love when you find something in the files and realize, “Hey, actually this is pretty good…”
by Charlene Teglia April 9th, 2012 at 10:46 pmCharli, It’s definitely rare, but it’s nice when it happens.
by Jordan Summers April 10th, 2012 at 12:12 amThat’s a good find. I like the part about writing advice. At some point, the writing will begin to look like someone else wrote it.
by BernardL April 10th, 2012 at 10:38 amBernard, Yeah, I was excited.
There is always a chance that will happen to your writing if you take a lot of people’s advice. Or you could experience what happened to me, which was my writing started to lose my ‘natural’ voice.
by Jordan Summers April 10th, 2012 at 11:05 am