The year is half gone. How did that happen?? Anyway, on with things …
I received my structural edit/ reader’s report on Kalileia back at the end of May, which is a 17-page document going over the manuscript and highlighting areas that can be improved upon. My editor, Kate, did a fantastic job, and we had a coffee together afterwards to discuss the book. I was so happy to hear that the structure and plotline was all working well, since I’d been the most worried about the last third of the book and trying to get the ending right. To my surprise, it was the first third of the book that needed the most work, and of course once my attention had been drawn to the weaknesses there, I was amazed that I hadn’t seen them myself. Note: this is the power of a great editor. They can point out the parts that aren’t working, but more importantly explain to you why they aren’t working and offer some suggestions on how to improve them.
Since getting the report back, I’ve been doing some serious work on part 1 of the story, and have ended up re-writing a lot of it. I’ve also been reading the opening sequences of a number of other books (my favourite kind of homework) to see how the authors deal with problems there. For a while it was scary and intimidating work, but now I’ve reached the point where I’m confident I know how to solve the problems and I’m really enjoying the rewrite.
That’s it for this month – I’m really trying to get this edit finished in the next few weeks, so I can start sending out to agents. Hopefully more news on this front soon!
What I’m reading:
As I haven’t updated this in a few months, there’s been a number of books. Ones that have stod out are:
Deep Work by Cal Newport. This is non-fiction and I think it is essential reading for anyone trying to write a book!
The Witches of Eileanan series by Kate Forsyth. I picked Dragonclaw off my bookshelf as part of my chapter 1 homework, and just couldn’t put it down! I read this series years ago, but have now started re-reading – it really is amazing, and I wish Kate still wrote high fantasy novels
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