A Week of Mondays – Week 9 #BehindTheBook

This week is going to look a little different as I actually stopped drafting and went back to the beginning to start to revise. So the word count is not building, it’s actually getting smaller as I start to cut things and rearrange. So instead of giving you a day-by-day play-by-play, I’m going to sum up what I did this week in terms of revising the first 3/4 of the book.

WEEKLY SUMMARY:

Date: 10/29/14 – 11/4/14
Total Words Cut: 2,421
Total Words Added: 3,102
Net Change: +681
Total Pages Revised: 177

If you remember last week’s post, I was getting really frustrated and down about the manuscript. I felt like I was losing steam and losing control of some of the threads. This sometimes happens when you fast draft (writing a rough draft without going back to reread or edit as you go.) I love fast drafting (it’s how I’m able to write rough drafts in 2-3 months) but there usually comes a time in every rough draft (at least for me) when I start to feel out of control. Like I don’t know what the book is about anymore. This usually comes about 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through the story. Right about the time when things have to start coming together, when loose ends have to start being tied up, etc. And that’s usually when I know I need to stop drafting and start the first revision. That’s when I go back to the beginning and start revising, filling in some of the blanks and placeholders that I left behind in my fast-draft wake. So that’s what I did this week. When I catch up to where I left off in the draft, I’ll then continue to write until the end. But hopefully, this time, I’ll feel a little better about what I’m doing and little more in control because I’ll have reviewed (and revised) a lot of the story leading up to that point.

After I write until the end, I’ll do another revision pass to make sure all the threads tie together and then I’ll probably do one more read-through to tweak and polish before send to my editor, agent, and beta readers for the first round of notes.

Here’s what I did this week:

I rearranged all of day 1 and 2, completing breaking down the structure of the days and putting them back together
I tried to cut down day 1 as much as possible (as it was WAY too long). I managed to get it from 100 pages to 90 pages but it’s still too long. It still need another chopping pass
I wrote the first version of the “break-up” scene (something I’ve skipped until now) but I don’t like it so I’ll have to rewrite it. However, I don’t know what it’s supposed to look like yet. It’s starting to form in my head, but it needs a few more days to brew before I can tackle it again.

In case you missed the first post, I’m live blogging (diary style) the progress of writing my new manuscript, A WEEK OF MONDAYS (which will be released by FSG/Macmillan in Spring 2016), to give fellow writers (and readers) an inside look into my writing process. And maybe give me a little insight as well!

Click here to read the first post or you can follow all the posts by clicking here.