Nicole J Simms/ June 9, 2015/ Blog/ 0 comments

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It has been a while since I’ve added a new post, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve been slacking. For those of you who see my social media pages, you will know that I have finally finished typing up my novel.

I had estimated that my novel was 113,000ish words long; however, the actual word count was 127,345 words. The final word count explains why it took so long to type up the novel; I started in April. However, with my novel typed up, it’s now time for the painful part of the process: the editing. I’m unsure why, but the thought of editing my novel fills me with so much dread and fear. I spent most of my first editing session scratching my head and wondering where to start. I have a lot of words to get right, chapters to rearrange, scenes to add and cut, and characters to understand. What has helped is imagining that my novel (the first draft) is a wonky house, and my other drafts will involve rebuilding, furnishing and decorating the house. The 2nd draft is the rebuilding stage, so I will take down all the bricks (chapters & scenes), and like a jigsaw, put them all back together again. I will then fill in any gaps (plot holes). Well, that’s the plan. It will be a long process (the 2nd draft, let’s not think of the others yet), but I haven’t come this far to give up now. There is a possibility that all of this editing will send me crazy, but as long as I have a submission ready novel in the end, I’ll be happy.

Since I have started editing my novel, my second novel has been trying to seduce me. It says, “Nicole, you don’t want to edit. You want to work on me instead. Come on, you know writing is better.” The temptation is strong, but I can’t start on another novel. I have been advised to start working on it in between my novel drafts, which is something I might do, but for now I will stick to writing the little ideas that pop into my head into my notebook.

As well as my novel, I have still been trying to shrink my short story editing pile. I’ve re-edited some stories and submitted them, but sadly I’ve had some rejections, but I’m not going to give up on them; my stories shall find a home. Talking about rejections, I’ve noticed that they don’t hurt as much as they used to. It may have taken three years, but I think I’m finally dealing with them better. So, it does get better, so don’t you give up on your dreams.

I’m going now, to wrestle with my novel. I hope I win. Final thing, I’ve added a currently reading widget to my blog. If you want one too, you can get it from here: https://wordpress.org/plugins/currently-reading-book/

Keep writing, folks!

My latest, The Horror Tree, posts can be found at the links below.

http://horrortree.com/setting-self-doubt-on-fire-reading-aloud-to-an-audience/

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