I know, I know. It’s been ages since my last post. But that’s only because I’ve been working so hard on my book. I keep thinking, just another couple of weeks and I’ll be done! – but then another few days go by and I realise I’ve still got a long way to go.
Right now I am re-writing the final chapter, which means I also have to re-write the epilogue too. It’s interesting how much my way of thinking has changed since I finished the first draft of this story a couple of years ago. I no longer want everything to be tied up so neatly at the end, and I also want to leave something for the sequel if I decide to write one (which I think I will at this stage).
Over December and early January I posted a few weeks of my writing schedule, just to share how I worked as a stay-at-home mum with the occasional paid web design project. Since then, I have settled into a fairly consistent routine. Each week, I have most of Tuesday, part of Wednesday and part of Thursday to write. I also usually end up with a few hours free on one of the weekend days too. Each session consists of revising about 20 – 50 pages, but there is a lot of overlap, so I’m often going back and revising parts that I revised the day before.
Right now, the book is almost 95,000 words, and that’s after cutting 8000 words from the second half of the story (these were either unnecessary scenes or bits that needed to be re-written).
Once this round of writing is done, I will probably go back and do one or two more read-throughs before handing it over to my two critique partners for feedback. I’m getting so impatient with this process, but I know I want to do it properly, and these things take time when you only have around fifteen hours per week to work (and you can’t always dedicate all of them to writing).
I may go back to doing up some weekly recap posts soon, but I just want to finish this damn story! I honestly don’t know how some people write ten books a year. Or even more than two. The initial writing process doesn’t take very long, but the editing is the thing that kills me. I suppose I will refine the process over time, and hopefully learn better ways of planning out my stories, but for now it’s a very long and drawn-out process.
If anyone has any tips, please send them through. I would love to hear how you manage your writing schedule.