After a steady pounding out of words on the old laptop I finished the official first draft of my next book. I say official because I had this one plotted and mostly written a few years ago, saved it on a floppy disc (remember those?) printed it out and put it away. Once I published my first book it was time to revisit that first story.
This is when I discovered the floppy disc was missing! Yikes and oh crap. I had been worried about finding someone with a floppy drive I could use to save it to a thumb drive. Now I had no disc and, as I was unhappy to discover, an incomplete printed manuscript. I could tell I had lots of pages missing but I hadn’t included page numbers on the document so i had no clue how many pages were missing. I’ll tell you, my days of doing transcription paid off when I was forced to sit down and transcribe what was on paper onto the previously referenced laptop.
This took a while.
I discovered during this process I am now a better writer. The guts of the story is good, the characters are interesting and the plot makes sense, but the mechanics of my writing style has improved. Credit goes to my ongoing research into putting ideas to paper, my online writing coach and the great tips from bloggers. I don’t think I will ever stop learning how to be a better writer.
So, I sat down with the print out of this draft and a red pencil and got busy slashing unnecessary text, editing chapters, rewriting scenes, correcting grammar and spelling and finding places I needed to flesh out. I discovered a couple of background character who cried out to be given a more prominent place in the story and this led me to think they might need their own story.
That made me happy. They are coming to life.
Got a wonderful compliment, through my daughter, from a reader who said she loved the first book and can’t wait for the next one! Wow did that feel good.
Cheers!
-N
http://www.amazon.com/Blame-Whiskey-Nancy-Vaughn/dp/1530786622
Wonderful. Congratulations!
Thanks! It’s fun.