Improving My Writing

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted, but all for good reasons. In the beginning of 2020 I had been really stuck on my current book in progress, and I wrote a blog post about that exact topic. I had no idea what to do next and was trying to figure it all out. After reading that blog post on self-doubt a friend reached out offering her assistance in editing my book, and lucky for me, she actually is trained at this sort of thing and is a writer herself! I had no idea creating that blog post would result in an editor finding me, but I’m so glad I did! It has taken me on a fast-paced journey of re-writing a lot of my manuscript. It’s been amazing having someone to bounce ideas off of and help me flesh out issues that I didn’t even realize were problems to begin with. Re-writing an entire 300+ page manuscript is extremely time-consuming, but what better time to do this then during a pandemic when we are literally being told not go anywhere?

Re-evaluating my book has been an exciting and humbling experience. Having a trained editor assist me really was what I needed, because she’s helping me spot holes in plot points that really need to be refined or completely changed. Fun fact, I also had no clue I use the word “wow” so much, and various other random words. This experience has also afforded me the opportunity to practice receiving and being open to constructive criticism. It certainly isn’t easy to have someone not only review but critique your writing, nevertheless I’m operating under the mindset that I want the best version of my book possible and as a result need to be open and willing to listen to any idea that could improve it. Because of my editor’s amazing advice and coaching, I have a clearer vision of my next steps. I’m constantly coming up with new ideas and trying to jot them down on a piece of scrap paper before they fly out of my head. Now my problem is trying to find the time to do all of the remaining work I need to accomplish!

Re-writing also means determining the consequences of changing one seemingly minor detail on the rest of the story. As an example, one of my characters is super rich, so I added in that his parents have a wrought iron gate with swipe card access only. I then realized I had to go through my entire book to find all the places my main character was visiting this guy and make it consistent with this newly added detail. Bearing in mind this process needs to be reiterated for any and all changes that I add in, I try and ensure I do this as soon as I add in something new, or else I’m going to forget and have to fix it later!

Although re-writing is very labor intensive, this experience has been rewarding; this is the best I’ve felt about my book in a long time. I’m super excited to see a more final product in the upcoming months. Thank you to Brianna Wyble for all of her help. I couldn’t do this without you! You can check out her portfolio and blog here: https://briannawyble.wordpress.com/.