My messy desk after Book 2 was done!
Well, overall, after 8 months, 2 drafts, 99,000 words, 320 gallons of iced tea, a new computer, and some crazy holiday weekends, I think I can say “I DID IT” about my Jan 1 deadline to complete Book 2!
On Jan 1, I was at 99,960 words (perfect word count for me), and had written an ending!
However, the ending is … well … “soft” (not very dramatic). The black moment is seriously lame, and there are a couple of loose ends that didn’t get exactly tied up.
Sooooooo …. I still have some work to do!
But I gave myself this whole month to edit for that very purpose, which will be just perfect. (It’s due to Berkley on Feb. 1.)
My next steps are:
- Cut 2,000 from the first half.
- Write another 2,000 in the second half to bolster the black moment and make it more dramatic.
- Then do the fun “editing on the word level” stuff, like deleting words I use too often, changing up sentence rhythms where I got lazy, deleting all of my adverbs, tightening up dialogue, that kind of thing. That’s really my favorite part of editing.
Whew!
Overall, I’m really happy about this story, though. I love these characters — Lia and Evan. The story has some fun whale-watching tales, a sweet “Cinderella” theme overlaid on top, and some serious sizzle. I can’t wait to share it with everyone!
WOOHOO! Congrats!!!!
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I can’t wait to read your book! You are on your way to a full-time book writing career. So exciting!!!