Caught Up

Well boys and girls, after a few visits full of hard work at the library while my younger sister babysat the children, I am officially caught up with my revising.

That's exciting!!!

With all the changes I made, I wrote out an outline so that I knew where I was going with it all. That was a huge help so that I wasn't afraid to tackle all the work that needed to be done. Then I went through, chapter by chapter, adding and deleting and rewriting what was necessary. At first it was just a sentence here and a paragraph there. Then big chunks. Then half chapters. Until finally, I was rewriting complete chapters, one right after another because everything was becoming completely irrelevant to the story that was now forming. So yesterday, after beating out 3 completely new chapters, I skimmed the 3 chapters that were left and realized that there was nothing in them that I wanted to save. So I deleted them. It was scary, but freeing, since for me it's easier to start from scratch than rework what's already there. I find that distracting, and it's harder to get the words to flow.

But, now I'm caught up. From here on out it's all new stuff instead of changing what was already written. It's nice, because I must say the revisions were a little draining. I'm excited to move on to the rest of the story and see where it takes me next! It's just been me and my little book in a bubble, and it's been nice, so I think I'll keep it that way until I'm done. Then I'll get it printed out for Andrea and Aubrey and they can go through it for me and make notes and edits for my next round of revisions. (It's easier for me to look at that stuff on paper, rather than scrolling through on my computer.) If I keep up the pace I have going, I should be done with my first draft by the end of July, but I should definitely be able to keep by goal to finish by the end of August. It's very exciting! I have started several stories, but I always get distracted and never finish, so I'm super excited that this one WILL get finished. It's a big deal!

Anyway, that's where I am right now. About halfway through, and on to all new material until I hit the end of book 1. (I seriously need to think of a nickname for it to use on here.) Wish me luck that I can keep up the good pace and the creative juices keep flowing for me! Until next time, happy writing!!