I have just completed my fourth draft of the second book in the Stormfall series. As has been noted before, the editing process - getting the chapters, story and characters "right" - has taken longer than I had at first anticipated. Editing is always a painstaking, arduous process. It is an unavoidable part of writing.
Going from the third to the fourth draft of the text, the word count has continued to rise: from 109,000 words at the completion of the third draft, to 118,000 words today. This has come from a combination of scenes which still needed to be added, as well as from embellishing the details and descriptions provided under many of the existing scenes.
While the fourth draft has taken longer to develop and edit than I might have hoped, on the positive side, I had already begun to provide copies of the earlier chapters in the book to my middle daughter to begin the beta-reader process. As of today, she has completed her review and recommended edits for the first two chapters - allowing me to get a jump-start on completing the fifth draft of the book. This will be the first draft to take advantage of input from my beta readers. My expectation is that I will need another two rounds of edits before the book is ready for release. As I may have mentioned before, writing a book is a marathon, not a sprint.
No comments:
Post a Comment