Writing News
This week I was blessed with time and speed and was able to complete Rough Draft #5 of my W.I.P. (work in progress)! I went over every paragraph and made sure that they were separated into internal vs. external clips as well as fixing the timing of action scenes. What ended up happening is me breaking up a bunch of paragraphs and repairing some awkward phrases. All good stuff. And doing a complete read through in two weeks was good for the story as well.
I have two official beta readers who will go over it with their fierce red pencils and return it to me for improvement, and two family members who just want to read it but might also have helpful insights along the way. I’ve already sent out the e-mail copies and will be making a print copy in town this week to send out. This is such an exciting point to be at and I really have ground to a halt with the improvements that I am able to make. It will be good to have those extra sets of eyes seeing things afresh.
Oh…let’s see. Rough Draft #4 was 86,128 words and 306 pages, while Rough Draft #5 is 86,785 words and 314 pages. So I added a few hundred words as well as breaking up some paragraphs. I hear tell of people who make their stories smaller as they revise, but most of the time this just seems to get fatter. Ah, well. Perhaps this story is destined for a curvaceous but lovely body type. Who wants to write anorexic books anyway?
