This week, I'm taking a break to focus a bit on attending workshops on writing and book marketing. Which reminded me that I have not posted my progress in a while. I just checked and the latest work count is currently over 91K! I'm closing in on the last few chapters to bring this one to a stopping point.
What do I mean by stopping point? When I first started finally writing Dearal's story in earnest, I imagined it all fitting in one book. I started writing it out then running through each chapter with my close critique group (thank you J&J!) who begged me to expand on some of the narrative so they could get to know Dearal better. Some major shuffling of how the plot unfolds gave me the room to delve into my main character's life more.
Once I had what felt was a complete manuscript, I sent it out to a handful of beta readers. Meanwhile, I found a developmental editor I liked and paid her to give me a professional read on how well it all worked.
And then I waited.
The feedback came in from the beta readers, giving me mixed reviews on stuff they thought worked and things they found confusing. It wasn't all bad, but I could see I still had a lot of work ahead of me. Ugh!
Then I got the official feedback from the dev editor. That was painful! She did a much more thorough critique of everything, pointing out major areas that lacked development and clarity. It really took the wind out of my sails.
I admit it, I wallowed in my despair for several weeks. Because she was not wrong and to fix it I would either need to strip out bits I felt added to the depth of my world in order to bring clarity to the main plot, or add a lot more to flesh out the areas that lacked depth. It was already over 118K words at the time, and I had no wish to make it so long as to be unwieldy.
So I did the biggest cut of all: I cut the book in half. With the full support of my dev editor, Dearal's story became two books.
This was about a year ago, and I am now just closing in on the end of book 1.
The other good news is that I know this is a much better story. I have had to room to fully develop Selah, who was initially a minor side character. This has given us an entirely different POV to learn about this world, and see other characters through her eyes.
At the start of this year, I joined another critique group (I will call them V2) who have been giving me a fresh perspective on the story and these characters. Don't worry, J&J are still lovingly reading through the latest updates with me. But, getting to see the story through the fresh eyes of half a dozen fellow writers in real time has been very informative.
On the visual side, I created some bookmarks with images and quotes. These are just drafts, but I thought it would be fun to share my favorites.
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