IT'S FINISHED!

Well, it's as finished as much as I can finish it on my own. I know that if it does get picked by an agent, they're going to want me to change a few things, and if it gets picked by a publisher, they'll want to change some things. 

So, when I say it's finsihed, I think I mean as much as I can do on my own, it is finished. 

I feel as if I've just walked up an enormous hill and I can finally stop and take in the view. 

My husband has been incredibly supportive while I've been writing and now I have time to pause, I'm feeling so completely grateful. 

I have printed out The Book, double sided and comb bound it so it feels like a real book. It's too big, and floppy, and sometimes the combs pop out but it's as real as I have at the moment. 

It feels so surreal to say that it's finished. I started writing this book in the summer of 2017. Three years feels like such a long time. The number of characters I have add, cut and repurposed seems incredible. One of my characters has changed his name so often that I have to really think about what his name is now. (It's Yeren, he's a Yeti.) 

Yeren is actually the character that's changed the most. First he was a bar tender in a pub, then a coffee shop owner, then a tourist guide and now he's settled in his role as chief engineer. His personality and accent have both changed over time too, and his prominence in the book. He was a side character who chipped in with observations and information, and now he's a mentor. 

It's funny to think back on the characters and their characterisations at the start of writing the book, when I started writing, before I learnt about how to write. 

I think the breakthrough with this book was learning about the Midpoint. None of my books had a midpoint but they certainly had a saggy middle where not much happened except rambling about the place. Now, I've built up to the middle, had a dramatic incident, and it all changes then until the climax. 

Now I can only hope that the book is picked up by #PitchWars, and if not, that it's good enough for the query trenches. Fingers crossed! 

Designing My Writing Schedule

I have a Day Job, that I love, that demands a lot of my time. Writing is my passion. I'm happiest when I'm writing and when I'm not writing, I'm thinking about writing.

To be able to write effectively and produce quality work, I had to make a writing schedule.

As an ex-pantser, a schedule is all new to me. I didn't know what would be coming so I used to just write as I went. However, I have planned this novel down to the tiniest arc, so I knew what needed to happen in each chapter. (Subject to creative change. - When I say I had planned it, if the story went another direction, I just re-planned accordingly.)

The main thing I had to consider when I prepared my writing schedule was the fact that I had to be Kind to Myself. I am one person and I can only do so much. I have children, a job, family commitments. All of this needs to be considered when planning your schedule.

I planned to write roughly 1000 words each writing session. For me, this is a manageable number, especially using my plan to help me. I type very quickly so I knew I could manage to write that many words.

I don't have a picture of my writing schedule but the editing one is here:

With my writing schedule, I didn't plan to write at the weekend. If I found I had time or had some ideas, I did add them in here and there, but mainly the weekends were family time. (This wasn't true for my editing schedule but I feel as if that's a different process.)

I factored in days where I was seeing friends or eating out and wouldn't be able to commit as much time to writing on that day.

My writing plan was realistic, kind and achievable. I had a deadline in mind. I didn't want to be writing the first draft in September so it had to be finished in August. But, baring that in mind, I was able to create a schedule that was something I could stick to without exhausting myself or taking time away from family and friends, or just chilling out.

I have to admit, I did sacrifice Me Time to make sure The Book was finished. I think it was worth it. And I love writing!

In a nutshell, for me, my writing schedule was

• realistictic
• achievable
• kind

For example, a typical week would go like this:

Monday
- write scene 3 (1000 words-ish)
Tuesday
- read scene 3, write scene 4 and 5 (1000 words-ish together)

And so on. Having a schedule to follow made me more focused, meant that I had a target for that day and that I wasn't pressured to write the entire book in the evening, squished between putting the kids to bed and my bedtime.

It doesn't always work, however. I have written a querying schedule but I was back to work in September and found that I'm too exhausted to stick to my schedule. I'm going to work on it.

It's Been a Long Slog

Now that I'm getting closer to the point where this book is actually going to be as finished as I can make it, I'm looking back at the process that got me here.

I started my book in the summer of 2017. I remember the moment I got the idea. I was talking to some children about a young adult book I'd been working on, but didn't feel as if it was going anywhere.

As we chatted, the idea for This Book slowly formed in my head. It started with the image of two children flying a spaceship to the Moon. Why were they in a spaceship? The story actually started as a build up to the children somehow getting aboard a spaceship, knowing how to fly it and then zooming off into space.

But I had to think about where they lived, what they'd be doing. The very first draft of The Book back in 2017 actually looks nothing like the finished one, except that the two main characters have remained constant.

I thought about adding in a little alien friend and about changing the settings. The main characters primary carers have lived, divorced, been absent and died all in different drafts.

Like many writers, I also have a demanding Day Job, so writing has been done in dribs and drabs. It's not until I made a writing schedule that I really made progress on this book. I've never tried it before because how can you schedule creativity? But actually, it made me more focused. Istead of writing an entire book in an evening, squished between the kids bedtime and when I passed out exhausted, I only had to write two scenes, or a chapter. It made everything so much more manageable. It also meant what I was working on that day was better quality because I wasn't trying to rush through it. For me, the difference is really noticeable.

I did the same for my editing schedule. I made a pretty editing schedule in my bullet journal whereas with my writing schedule, I just added it to my normal weekly tasks so I don't have a pretty page to show you.

As you can see, on the first day I bunched together six chapters which really wasn't very realistic. It was a weekend (I think?) so I did manage to finish it off but I wasn't able to do much else that day.

I made a much more manageable editing schedule for the following days. And, as you can see, I made notes to myself on the schedule too, where I've merged scenes/chapters and split scenes or chapters.

I also tried to balance out where the midpoint was, by moving chapters or scenes to later parts of the book. There are two pieces that would fit after the midpoint, so they were moved to help things balance a bit better.

Now I'm just on the final edit. I'm checking it all makes sense, the words are all where they should be, the plot holes are filled in and everything works as it should do. Then, The Book I started in 2017 might actually be finished, properly finished, for the first time.

I've learnt a lot about writing in the mean time. I still have those first drafts in the folder for this book. I can't face looking at them. I've read a lot of books about writing. I've read books and blogs and vlogs and posts about editing. Hopefully it's all made a difference.

So, What's Happening?

I haven't been blogging as much recently and there's two reasons for this:

1) I am back at Day Job so I'm much more tired in the evenings and don't have as much energy for personal projects. It's really noticeable by 8:30pm, I'm exhausted and my mental energy is next to nothing.

2) The small amounts of energy I do have are spent on working on the manuscript. This isn't leaving much time for blogging, but I'm back!

How's The Book?

My manuscript at the moment is with a very kind beta reader (my dad) who is helping me with repeated sentences, things that aren't clear, grammatical errors, etc. Then I generally do make the changes he's suggested. There's one sentence here or there he's said to delete but I think they work for cadence and for my voice, so I've kept them.

After that, I'm reading the book aloud. This has helped me spot any errors that aren't clear, because my audience asks questions!

For example, one of my characters was hiding but the audience thought the character wasn't even there at all. I had to rewrite a part of that scene to give a clue that the character was the house afterall.

So I'm working on reading the second draft aloud and using that to compile the third draft. In theory, I'm going to have a very polished manuscript on my hands!

Even I can say it's the best I've ever written, but I'm not sure if that's saying much.

Self Published

I've always wanted to have a copy of my own book in my hand. It's the dream. I love watching the unboxing videos because they're amazing. 

I once thought it might be nice to have a copy of my book that I

published by myself. Just a one time thing. Even if it never gets published, I'll still have a copy of it.

I've been looking into it and Lulu.com have been recommended by other authors. 

I once asked my husband for a published copy of my book as a Christmas present. It turned out that I needed to do a complete rewrite before Christmas and didn't have it finished in time for it to be a Christmas present. 

It's going to be finished in time now! 

What do you think? Is it better to wait until it's the official published copy, or just have my own copy published by myself just to have the book in my hand? 

Beta Reading

Now that I've finished editing the first draft, the book is with my beta reader. I've had the first 12 chapters back, just hanging on for a few more.

Then, I'm going to read through it again and check for anything that doesn't make sense.

There's nothing more anxious than waiting for beta reading feedback.

While I'm waiting for beta feedback, I'm going to be working on my synopsis and my query letter.

I've got a book on that too! I'm going to be reading and hopefully my synopsis will be good.

It's really hard to condense all the story into just one page of text and make sure all the cliff hangers, tension, plot threads shine through.

After lots of hard work and with fingers crossed, hopefully I'll get it right. 

Second Draft Done!

It is such a nice feeling to get to the end of the book and know that my first pass through it is done!

I've really enjoyed reading my book. There's lots that needed to be changed,

edited, adjusted and moved. I cut out a lot of words and even merged two chapters that had no jeopardy. Making each scene in those chapters shorter added a bit more conflict, I think.

I hope, anyway.

I find I second guess myself a lot. I've been reading all these books about reading and just hoping that I'm doing the right thing.

Scenes can only stay in the book if they have a mission that moves the plot along or shows character development. They have to contain conflict, stakes, have a clear beginning, middle and end. There's so much to remember and I hope that I've included it in every chapter.

It's such a relief knowing that it's done, for the moment. I'm going to leave it now for a couple of days and read through the next draft and see if it flows after the first edit. All I want is for it to make sense, flow, become a page turner and be a good story. I can make it into a good story just by wishing it, right? Right?