I’m now working on the last two chapters of TRC. They’re complete rewrites. Now that I’m almost finished this draft I’m getting lazy. My imagination is at a standstill. I’m not feeling that wave of emotions that carry me through my writing. I’m not even CLOSE to completing TRC though! Here’s my plan outline for TRC:
– Complete this round of revision
– In the next round, focus on the minor characters (make her life’s story along with her role in Amanda’s life more consistant).
-In the next next round, focus on developing and adding more mature, witty dialogues. Also, make the character’s motivations more convincing.
-In the next next next round, edit grammar and typos. Watch out for historical inaccuracies. And get the phraseologies down pat.
-Send queries off the agents
As you can see, I am very far from ready. For t he writers out there, where are you at in your writing right now, how long have you been working on it, and how much longer do you think it will take before you query?
Here’s a tip Cheri gave to my editor to me (it’s a “formula” to writing a good plot, or something):
Write each scene down on three by five cards, that way if you need to restructure it, it’s all right there before you. Date it too to make sure the timeline works and you’re not taking too much time to get something done. Having your through line (what the story is about), keep it all tied in as close to that as possible. Let your characters tell you where to take the story…”
Hope this will be some help to you guys. I intend to do this just as soon as I get out of my lazy mode.
June Hur 
Well, I’ve been working on this novel since March, though the larger idea – the world, and the characters, and some of the basic ideas – have been in development for about six years now. I’m definitely nowhere close to finished – I have to finish writing Shards, along with the first round of edits being done by my friend. Then I’ll probably edit it again, based on the feedback I’ve been getting from FP, and then I’ll probably find someone else to look over the whole thing, and then I’ll polish it up some more…
Yeah. I have no idea how long this is going to take, since I’m trying to do this and get my teaching certification simultaneously.
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Afterwards you should put it up on Authonomy. I got some really great advices and met some awsome people as well. I hope you get through this story well. I’ll be keeping an eye on your progress..hehe
By the way,I have been following your blog, and wanted to leave you a comment about your Corset post, but it wasn’t working. Anyway, just wanted to tell you that I enjoyed it!
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I was looking into Authonomy once I get the first draft done. (I’m definitely not going to keep it on FP forever.) I might just make an account now, just to look around, get used to the site, and meet some people.
I’m glad you enjoyed my corset post, haha. We spent almost two days talking about them in one of my history classes, so I got to know them very well…
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Yay, I’m glad you joined! You should start getting yourself known by joining threads later when you get your story up. The more people know you and back your book, the more chance you have of getting your story onto the ed’s desk. Then you’ll have something to brag about in your query letter.
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Five more rounds of revision until TRC is published (a sure thing)…I don’t think I can wait!
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I can’t wait either!–but i must.
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Well, I’m working on Chapter 20 of WW and ..there’s going to be a huge break through emotionally (or at least there’s supposed to be). After that, there’s a lot of drama and action. Since I don’t write linearly, I have a lot of it already written. I’ll put it together (i think there’s like 10 chappies left). Read through it once to see it the story itself is any good. Then go through it and fix grammatical/phraseology errors. THEN I’ll start my 2nd Draft/Rewrite (hoping to do this before October)
Then, I’ll compare the 1st and 2nd drafts and see which structure works better, pick one, fine tune that one – then hopefully start querying 🙂
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You’re going to REWRITE EVERYTHING?!?!?!?! Oh m goodness. That’s a lot of work though? WW is fine as it is. Couldn’t you just work with the original draft? Writing in some scenes and dialogus, omitting some, rewriting others? Rather than rewriting everything?
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oh, I didn’t mean rewrite the ENTIRE thing! I’d go crazy if I did that, lol. I meant rearrange scenes, add/delete scenes, maybe take out a few characters, definately clear up some stuff and play up the bad guy
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OHHH ok, whew, you scared me there. Hopefully you story will be ready to query by the end of this year then.
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