First Edit Complete!

I was so excited about the progress this week (not to mention busy) that I didn’t have a chance to write a blog about this week’s big milestone: the first edit is complete!

Austin really pulled through and edited the last half of the book in about a week, and I managed to get through all his notes and changes in two days.  My eyes are still bothering me from it but I managed to get it done anyway.

While chatting with him as I went through his edits, he let me know that he felt like I took greater care towards the end, saying that the last few chapters had very few edits.  Which I found a bit surprising given that the last few chapters seemed to just fly out all at once — I blinked and before I knew it, I had the last chapters and was done.

My one question (so far) to him was whether or not he could predict the outcome — which he couldn’t.  I enjoyed that.  My whole point (with the story) was the surprise the reader and to end it on a note that would be unexpected but (hopefully) satisfying.

To prepare for the next round of edits I’ve printed a hard copy (which to my surprise was 226 pages and a whole black ink cartridge in my shiny new Epson printer) so I can mark it up with pen.  I’ll be on a plane in a little over a week to Vegas for a long weekend and will be doing some story and character editing on the flight there and the flight back.  I figure I should have enough time to write some notes and get down some thoughts after I get through a full reading for myself.

I’m really excited that I’m moving through this process at a greater speed now and with Austin’s notes, I feel like I’m almost unstoppable.

In case you’re wondering what the book looks link printed, here’s a picture I took:

Printed!

Editing Continues and Some Thoughts

I’ve been chugging away at the edits that Austin sent over before he left for a vacation in Greece (I know, I’m jealous too!) and I’d guesstimate I’m a little less than halfway through the list of edits he had.

So far I’ve trimmed a few thousand words out through the various edits, which I think is good.

Going back through and editing has allowed me to read a lot of the actual book myself.  It’s helped me realize that there’s some changes I’d like to make.

Most notably, I want to change my lead female’s name — for reasons I won’t get into here.

I also want to change the name of the band — as a placeholder I’ve been using Resolute Resolve, which makes no sense and is flat-out stupid.  I’ve known since I started writing that this would be a placeholder, I just have to spend the time to come up with a different name.

I need to revisit describing some of the characters — I’ve done this twice so far already, but need to do it again as now months after writing some of the characters I’m having a hard time remembering what I wanted them to look like.

The story needs some work — there’s certain keys that I wanted to hit to make sure that the end is really powerful.  It’s not a twist in the traditional sense, but I think the ending comes as somewhat of a surprise.  My hopes is that I pulled it off well, but I know that there’s some work that needs to be done.

I’m still pretty well on schedule for where I wanted to be at this time.  I’m hopeful that when Austin gets back from vacation we can plow through the rest of the edits, and then I can use my (fancy new) printer to fire off a printed copy to mark up with a pen.

I was hoping I could do that on the plane on the way to my vacation at the end of the month, but I don’t think that’ll work out with the timing.  Perhaps I’m wrong, but time will tell.