I’ve been working with my good buddy, Austin, lately to have him go through my first draft and do a rough edit. From what I’ve read online, that means he goes through and reads the whole thing, pointing out typos, grammatical errors, etc. Of which there are plenty, I’m sure.
He’s also been pointing out things that I haven’t noticed as I wrote: describe this character better, this character said this here and something contradicting here.
We decided, rather than waiting for him to finish the whole thing, that he’d send me a few chapters at a time. That way I can read his feedback, incorporate what he’s said, and not have the daunting task of doing that all at once.
One thing’s obvious — the editing part of this is going to not only take way longer than I thought it would, but it’s also going to take a lot longer than writing the initial first draft.
I went through the feedback this morning for the first four chapters. It took me about 3 hours to incorporate the changes into my first draft. There weren’t that many of them, it was just that going back and forth between his PDF with his notes on it and the editing application I’m using was time consuming. Looking from one screen to the next and trying to find where the two words line up was taking more time than I thought it would.
So the good news is that we’re progressing with the editing of the book! The downside is that it’s taking much longer than I anticipated. With this new schedule and the rewrite I’ll have to do, I’m hoping that I’ll have been able to get the book done by September. I’m setting an internal goal of having it be for sale before my birthday at the end of September.
My best friend is also reading the book, and I’ll be interested to hear what her feedback is. So far I know she’s read through the first five chapters, and she said that it started a bit slow but once she got to chapter 3 she wanted to keep reading to find out what’d happen next. I guess that’s a good sign.
I’m still worried about the whole thing. It’s nerve-racking not knowing whether or not people will like what you’ve written, or sympathize with your characters or story. It’s scary that you’ve invested so much time in something, and it may turn out your story is a giant pile of garbage. I’m hoping that’s not the case, but only time will tell.
If you’ve read the book, I’m hopeful that you’ve enjoyed it. Or if you are reading the book, I hope you like it so far!
