I’m up to chapter 35 of ~37. I’m in the home stretch with my edits! And that is scary as hell. This last pass has been super hard. I did a developmental edit on myself, cut multiple subplots, added in a new POV (along with her subplots)–
all while trying to stay a few chapters ahead of my critique partners (that didn’t work).
When this draft is done, I need to do a few more sweeps:
- Knock off To Do list of minor fixes
- Go through my crutch words and replace
- Run chapters 10+ through Natural Reader
Once all that is done, I can get my manuscript out to more beta readers while I look for an editor. I need to find one that knows fantasy.
With any luck, I’ll be able to start writing book two for NaNoWriMo, though I hope to start even earlier. In October, I want to fuck off for a week to my mom’s house (6+ hours away) and just WRITE. I did a lot of writing last Thanksgiving and Christmas, because I was sick and able to “rest” upstairs (writing is resting, right?) while other people tended the kids. I need that kind of uninterrupted focus again, where I can churn out 2-3k words a day.
With all the subplots I cut, I already have 30-40k of words going into book two. The next two books are going to interlock pretty heavily and I’m not sure where to cut off certain plot points, so I may have to do the dreaded outlining thing.
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