Wow, how has it been two months since I last posted here? Time flies, my friends, especially when you’re working on a bunch of different stuff. Let’s cover all that work, shall we?

The II AM Trilogy

With the exception of an upcoming contest, I’ve put the II AM Trilogy to bed by creating a compilation eBook that contains all three titles in one file, and by redesigning the website. Note: if you’ve already read TBTB, Blood Hunt, and TCotS, there is nothing new in the collection and you should not feel any need to buy it (unless you want it all in one file for some reason). This is just a way for interested new readers to get the whole thing at once instead of having to download/buy three different ebooks. It’s not intended as a cash-grab from people who already paid for my work.

You can get more info at the new II AM Trilogy website. There’s also a FAQ, the full historical timeline (starting at 5000 BCE and going all the way to present day), and some other fun stuff.

The Broken God Machine

I’ve completed the final draft of The Broken God Machine, making substantial changes to the narrative that I think really help the book. It will shortly be going out to my advance readers for one last, quick round of feedback, following which it will head for my editor Lauren. We’re looking good for an early fall 2013 release! I’ve also engaged a very talented illustrator to do the cover. You should check out his website!

More on TBGM in the coming weeks.

Monster Hunters

The original draft of Monster Hunters is a fun book and I like it a lot, but it’s severely flawed from a structure standpoint: basically the climax happens in the middle and the whole last third of the book is stuff that really should take place before said climax. This is what happens when you write a novel in 30 days with very little thought put into it beforehand beyond “this girl kills a werewolf and gets recruited by a school that trains monster hunters” …

So I’m restructuring it, basically by cutting and pasting the chapters and then reading through and changing stuff that no longer makes sense (like the climax happening in February when, in the new order of things, it should happen in June). After that, it’ll go out to my advance readers for their first round of feedback. I have no idea if I will ever release this book, let alone when, but I’d like to at least advance it along the stages.

Also I’m renaming it from “Morgan Skylark and the Monster Hunters” to “The Monster Hunters – Book 1: The Werewolf at the Window” … but since the name’s never been official anyway, it really doesn’t matter much!

Non-Fiction

HUGE gin roundup coming to Primer soon. I submitted it at the end of March so it’ll probably be up in late April or early May. Sixteen gins with full tasting notes, plus I did a martini test for each one. It’s a fun, informative read (I think).

The Future

With The Broken God Machine about to leave my hands for a couple of months, my thoughts are turning to starting a new book. I’ve spoken before about a revenge thriller set in a partially flooded, future Brooklyn, and that’s what I’ll likely be working on next. It should b a standalone book, like TBGM, and I’m expecting it to come in at about 95,000 words, also like TBGM (that’s a bit longer than The Blood That Bonds). Sometimes these projects have a tendency to grow, though, so we’ll see. At 1,500 words a day, I should be able to crank this thing out in about two months. Which is just about the amount of time Lauren needs for editing TBGM. Serendipitous!

That’s it for now.

Whoah, it’s been way too long since I updated this here blog. The good news is: that’s because I’ve been hammering away at The Children of the Sun! Between that and my full-time job, I just haven’t had a ton of time for the peripheral stuff. I have been posting to my facebook page, though, so if you’re into that sort of thing you should go “like” me so you can get those updates! In the meantime, here are some updates on various projects:

The Children of the Sun

Man, this book is a beast! There’s just so much stuff that happens. I think you guys will like it and come out feeling satisfied at the end, but it’s hard to tell when I’m in the midst of the drafting process. On that note, I have trimmed an amazing amount from the first draft, almost 25,000 words, with more to go. I basically went in and did massive surgery, first, before I started the second draft. This left a lot of gaping holes that need to be sewn up (I literally deleted two entire chapters and also nuked a character from the book), but trust me: the resulting book will be leaner, meaner, and a better read. It’ll also focus more on Two, which is good since she’s the star!

I’m more than 65,000 words into the second draft now, and humming along. Every time I finish a chapter, I spend the next day going through it and then send it off to my editor, Lauren. This will let her get started on the easy stuff (punctuation, grammar, typos), and then when she has the full manuscript in hand she can help with things like flow, consistency, and outright story errors. She’s good at that stuff, which is an immense relief when you’re working on a massive novel and are no longer sure that what you’re writing even makes sense!

I’ve set some very aggressive word goals for myself for July. I don’t know if it’ll QUITE be done by the time I head for France in August, but that’s OK … long plane rides are a great excuse for writing. I’ll be posting progress updates here more frequently moving forward. Also, Karla‘s cover is coming along beautifully and I’ll be posting more images soon! She’s way past the sketch seen above.

The Broken God Machine

Well, the good news is: The Broken God Machine is out there in the big, scary world of agent submissions. The even better news is: it’s already had a bite. An agent for a prominent New York firm requested the full manuscript and is reading it over. Additionally, an editor at St. Martin’s Press (a division of Macmillan) is taking a look as well.

Now, the most likely result is that both of them pass on it — that’s just the way it works. But still, it’s pretty great to be getting some interest. Should be hearing back from one or both of them pretty soon. Wish me luck!

Non-Fiction Work

I’ll be doing some more cocktail articles this summer. I’ve got one already submitted to Primer that chronicles the history of the Daiquiri. After that will be a Tiki Drink roundup, and then a history of the Margarita. I’ll be posting here as the articles go live. I also am doing some spirits reviewing over on my Tumblr.

More coming soon. Stay tuned!

I’ve polished up The Broken God Machine and begun querying agents about representing that manuscript. I’m pursuing traditional publication for this one because I’m still curious about that world, and about whether I can the same success working within the industry that I have outside of it. We’ll see how that goes. If I don’t get any bites after a while, I’ll make some tweaks and see if they help. In the end, I can always publish it the same way I have my vampire books. Advance reader feedback has been really good, and I think you guys will enjoy it!

With TBGM out of the way for now, I’m moving back to The Children of the Sun. It’s time to start draft 2, and in this case that means cutting. Lots of cutting. My goal is to slash 25,000 words out of the book (which would bring it to right around the same length as Blood Hunt). I think that will make it leaner and meaner, more fun to read, and also address some of the issues that my trusted readers brought up with the first draft, one of which is that this book about Two just spends too much time not featuring Two!

TCotS is flabby right now, as evidenced by the fact that I managed to trim more than 9,000 words off of it this weekend by hacking out some sections that just aren’t integral to the story. I liked them. I’ll miss them. But they had to go.

This is a necessary part of revision — there are bits of The Blood That Bonds and Blood Hunt that never saw the light of day, either. I’ve never had a book this long, so I’ve never had to cut this many words before, but I think it’ll be good for me and for the novel! The whole point of a first draft is to just get the damn thing out and written down. That’s done. Now it’s time to make it good!

Oh, on one other TCotS-related note: the thumbnail ideas for the cover are starting to come in. You can see one of them in this very post! More on that soon.

Well, I’m at it again! I can’t seem to help but set up challenges for myself, when it comes to my writing, and the second draft of The Broken God Machine is no exception. I’ve set myself a very aggressive number for this one, for two reasons: first, TBGM is arguably the most complete first draft I’ve ever written; it came out of my brain in a state I’m really happy with, and even features solid foreshadowing and a little bit of symbolism right from the get-go. Second, the simple fact is that second drafts are much faster and easier than first drafts. You’re not trying to figure out what happens anymore, you’re just trying to figure out the best way to present it.

Sure, there’s more than just sentence cleanup involved — there’s a middle chapter of the book that I plan on excising in its entirety and replacing with something else, and there are chunks of description and dialog that need rethinking, not just rewording. That’s fine, though, because for much of the book I can crank through the words like crazy, cleaning and prettying and clarifying without having to engage in structural work.

Therefor, I’ve set my goal at 2,500 words a day. That would be an aggressive number even for many writers for whom their work is their full-time job. Considering that I’m rarely able to even start in on it until 9 PM or so, it’s even more difficult. Still, my first night of the challenge, last night, showed that it’s very doable; I wrote more than 3,800 words!

I’ll be posting regular status updates here, and of course tweeting and facebooking about it. Swing by and cheer me on!

Well, it took quite a lot of hard work and many long nights, but the first draft of The Children of the Sun, the final book in the II AM Trilogy, is now complete. The whole story is laid out, and everything came together pretty well. I’ve been waiting to write the closing epilogue for several years, and it feels good to finally have the words out on the screen. Now to begin the long and arduous process of taking the first draft and turning it into something worth publishing!

The Children of the Sun is the longest single work I’ve ever written, by a fairly wide margin, weighing in at 177,425 words. Blood Hunt was 154,148. Since most people think more in terms of pages than words, I’ll give my best estimate: The print edition of Blood Hunt is 516 pages long including all the extra pages like the dedication, author’s note, the TCotS sneak peek, etc. I expect that the print edition of TCotS will be close to 600 pages long.

So, let’s discuss next steps. The first thing I’m doing is taking a short break from writing. One week, to be exact, to let my brain recuperate and distance itself from the work a bit. I’m going to play some video games and relax, and then I’m going to go back to the manuscript and tweak a few things that I already know I don’t like. After that, I will send it out to several trusted readers, who will in turn read it and give me their feedback. This is hugely helpful in identifying inconsistencies, plot holes, and parts of the story that just don’t “work” for people.

Once feedback is gathered, I will begin the second draft. This involves a complete rewrite of the book in a new word processing document, with the first one open on the other side of my monitor. It usually goes much faster than the first draft, and I will be setting myself a much higher nightly word count for that reason.

After the second draft is done, I take another short break, and let my wife read it and give final comments. Then I go back to work, and produce a third draft. This one isn’t rewritten from scratch. Rather, I duplicate the second draft and then go through it making edits and tweaks as I need to. Once that draft is finished, it goes off to my editor, Lauren. She’ll read through the manuscript several times, making multiple passes for tone, consistency, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and so forth. Then she’ll hand me a “marked up” document with all of her changes, thoughts and suggestions, and I’ll go back through the manuscript one more time, incorporating her edits. At that point my work as a writer ends, and my work as production designer begins — that’s how it goes when you format your own print and eBooks, design your own cover, and build your own promotional website.

But we’ll cover that process in more detail when we get to it! For now, the important part is: the first draft’s done. The story’s written. We’re still on schedule for November, 2012. I hope you’ll stick with me for the ride!

Writing a novel, for me, is a lot like driving a car through an area I’m only semi-familiar with.

There are times when I know where I’m going and can comfortably haul along at 65 mph (105 kph, for all my fans outside of the US), churning out 2000-plus words a day and feeling great. This usually happens when I hit a section of the book that I’ve thought about quite a lot already. Because I don’t have to think too much about where I’m going — I “know the area” so to speak — I can concentrate on just getting the words out in a way that hopefully doesn’t sound like the ravings of a deranged chimpanzee, banging on a Speak-n-Spell.

Related to these times, but not quite the same, are the straightaways — periods where I may not even know the road, but it’s so straight and wide and open that I can still just crank out the words. Everything is just clicking, and the story’s flying out behind me. These don’t happen often, but when they do, it might be my favorite part about writing.

More often than anything else, there are times where I have to slow it down to maybe 30 mph (48 kph) because, while I know the general direction I’m headed in, I just don’t really know the roads all that well. I haven’t driven them that often — that is, I haven’t thought about this particular section over and over — and I need to be careful not to miss my turn, and lead the story off into some crazy direction it wasn’t supposed to go. These are the days where I hit 1500 words (or 1,747, right now) and feel more relieved than anything else. “Whew … got through that without crashing into anything.”

Last but not least are the times when things go wrong; you take a bad turn, hit traffic, or find yourself detoured by construction. You have no idea where you’re going and only a vague sense of what the right direction is. More often than not, you end up having to turn around and backtrack. In the writing world, this means you’ve lost the thread of your plot, and usually it means deleting words, sometimes whole paragraphs, to get back to where you need to be. Man, nothing hurts like highlighting an entire paragraph and whaling on the delete key, but sometimes it has to be done!

I try not to “plot” my novels. That is to say: I try not to lay out all of the important elements ahead of time. I like the organic feel of coming up with stuff as I go. At the same time, it’s a bad idea to have no direction whatsoever, so I do like to give myself lots of map markers — points in the plot that I know I want to hit — and then finding my way to them. This lets me have certain scenes that I can think about over and over, and then really tear through. For example, in The Blood That Bonds, I knew what was happening to Abraham well ahead of time. As far as what happens to Theroen? Didn’t know until a few days before it happened. As a consequence, the Abraham scene was much easier and faster to write, but both scenes are equally important to the reader (hopefully!).

I’m nearing the end of The Children of the Sun, now. I’ve just begun the fifth and final section of the book, and it’s an interesting place to be. I’m hoping for lots of straightaways, and I have a few more map markers guiding my way, but I’m not kidding myself: there’s going to be some twists and turns, and maybe even some backtracking, before I reach that final destination.

Good gentlemen, gentlewomen, and gentlecreatures who read this blog, I am pleased to alert you to the fact that in late December I decided it was time to make a concentrated push to get the first draft of The Children of the Sun finished up and out to my early-draft readers. Thus, I began the 1,747 words per day challenge on December 27th.

“What’s the 1,747 word challenge?” you ask? Why, it’s a challenge to myself to write at least 1,747 words every day from now until the end of January.

“Why 1,747 words?” you ask? Well, because when I started the challenge, I was at 87,136 words, and I figure the book is going to be about 150,000 words long (about the same size as Blood Hunt), and so I determined that 1,747 words a day would get me to 150,000 on January 31. If the book isn’t finished at that point, it will be very close! Also, “seventeen-forty-seven” just sounds nice when you say it out loud.

“How’s it going?” you ask? Swimmingly! So far I’ve written 16,750 words since the challenge started, which is an average of 1,861 words per day! I’ve only come in below 1,747 once, and that was on New Year’s Eve (where I still managed a thousand words before my wife and I began gorging ourselves on oysters and champagne). If you discount that day, I’m averaging more like 1,965!

“Why should I care?” you ask? Because the faster I finish the first draft, the faster I can get it out to my early readers — people who I trust to go through the book and tell me which parts of it are crap. The faster I get it to them, the faster they can get their feedback to me, and the faster I can start on the second draft, and … well, you get the idea. This whole process leads up to me releasing The Children of the Sun, and I would hope that we can all agree that the earlier I do that, the better!

So, stay tuned. There will be further updates on the 1,747 challenge. ALSO, I will be releasing more than 15,000 spoiler-free words from The Children of the Sun in early February. The story is a flashback called “Amun Sa and the Girl from the Desert” and tells Ashayt’s backstory. It’s integral to the plot of The Children of the Sun, but it also stands alone. I’m even having Karla Ortiz do an illustration for it! The cost to you, the reader, to download this story? ZERO DOLLARS! Who loves ya?

More soon!

I spent this past weekend working on The Blood That Bonds, a book that I swore to God, Vishnu, and Ray Kurzweil that I was done with more than a year ago. Such is life when you’re prepping for print.

Incorporating another person’s edits into your work can be a surprisingly slow and difficult process. On the surface, it seems simple enough — correcting a typo here, fixing an improper piece of punctuation there — and as long as you stick to basic copy-editing, it is indeed no big deal. What’s more difficult, though,  is dealing with edits that include changes, suggestions, and questions about the story itself. Take for example, this excerpt from the first chapter of The Blood That Bonds:

Not twenty yards away was a piece of art in chrome and fiberglass, black like his clothes, black like hers. A sports car unlike any she was familiar with. Certainly not the loud, rowdy, American Dodge Viper, nor any of the trim, mechanical Japanese imports. The lines of the car were — must have been — Italian. Two’s father was an auto mechanic, but this was a vehicle beyond anything she’d ever seen.

This is what it looked like when it came back from my editor:

And this is the final revision:

Not twenty yards away was a piece of art in chrome and fiberglass, black like his clothes, black like hers. Two’s father was an auto mechanic, and she knew her cars, but this was not a vehicle with which she was familiar. The lines of the car seemed Italian.

Them’s some good edits! The revised paragraph is not only smoother and easier for the reader to process, but we also cut out a lot of extraneous words and pare it down to just what really needs to be said. This leaves us with with more words available to spend on the important things, like characterization, “showing instead of telling,” and dialog. All good things, but it should also be noted that amidst all of these substantial changes to the wording lies the potential for the introduction of new typos, misspellings, omissions, and other errors. I hate errors!

This is my editor, Elise. Hi, Elise!

Obviously, no book is perfect. You can probably pull any given book at your local bookstore off the shelf and find at least one typo somewhere in its text, especially if it’s a first printing. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to eliminate them, and this is why any time I’m working on edits to a manuscript, I live in mortal terror of introducing new problems while trying to fix old ones!

There’s no real solution to this other than taking your time and editing with care, which is why this stage in a book’s life can be pretty drawn out. You’ll need to check and re-check, type carefully, and probably avoid doing your editing at 3 AM after a night spent slamming down daiquiries (we can’t all be Hemingway). You want to be awake, alert, and aware, and you’ll want to go slowly. It’s all part of the process, and it’s why people who write for a living laugh when others suggest that their job is easy.

The fear of introducing new errors into your work while incorporating edits is both tangible and legitimate. Fortunately, the benefits that those edits provide make it worth the time and patience required to make sure they’re properly integrated.

Seek out smart, thoughtful readers who will take notes on your work.

Believe it or not, one of the most difficult aspects of writing a book is getting honest feedback on your early drafts. Finding readers can be a difficult task in the first place, and even if you’re lucky enough to have achieved a level of popularity which simplifies that aspect, you’re still faced with the daunting task of weeding out the ones who can give you the criticism and critique that is so vital to redrafting (a process which I covered in my last blog entry). When you find someone who can give that kind of feedback — what I call a trusted reader — it’s like striking gold.

Over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to cultivate a small but incredibly valuable group of trusted readers who I know will deliver honest, specific, unbiased feedback on early drafts of my work. This group includes a few old friends, a professional editor whose services I periodically employ, a select few internet friends, and my brilliant wife (who pulls no punches!). I am highly appreciative of all of these folks, and I place an extraordinary amount of value on my relationships with them. Quite simply: without their input, my work would suck.

When trusted readers give feedback, it’s the type of response that delves well beyond “I loved it” or “I hated it” (or even worse: dead silence). The Blood That Bonds has earned enough fans at this point that I could quickly put together a group of readers for subsequent projects, but not all of them would be able to provide the feedback I need. Make no mistake: I’m very glad that they’re out there! I love hearing from people who enjoy my work, and the rush of receiving an “I loved your book!” email has yet to wear off. I’m not sure it’s ever going to.

I’m just not always looking for that rush. In particular, when I’ve finished a first or even second draft, what I’m looking for is criticism. Hard, heavy criticism. Criticism that hurts, that makes me want to get defensive and start justifying my choices. Criticism that leaves me thinking, “Jesus … I guess I shouldn’t quit my day job just yet.” Not every reader is able to give that kind of criticism. A lot of readers don’t want to give that kind of criticism; they just want to enjoy the story!

The thing is: nothing gets better without criticism. This is why identifying and appreciating trusted readers is so vital to any author’s work. I’m not going to pretend that The Blood That Bonds is a work of high literary art, but it’s a hell of a lot better in its finished version than it was as a first draft. My friends Caryn and Josh pointed out glaring issues with that draft which required major rewrites in the second draft. My editor Lauren went over draft two with a critical eye, pointing out not only myriad typos and grammar errors, but also giving her input on plot, pacing, and characterization. These opinions were all invaluable.

I’m currently in the middle of a feedback round on two different books: The Broken God Machine (first draft) and Blood Hunt (second draft). In the case of the former, I’ve sent it out only to the specific few people mentioned above. In the case of the latter, I’m trying something new: in addition to sending it to my trusted readers, I held a contest and picked ten readers who said they wanted to read it and fill out a brief questionnaire once done. I’ve already received five responses, and all five have provided useful information! I may well consider using some or all of them as trusted readers on future  projects. If you have existing fans, and aren’t terrified that they’ll leak your manuscript, I recommend giving something like this a shot.

Of course I can’t (and won’t) change every aspect of a book to suit the whims of everyone who comments on it. In the end, it’s my story, and certain plot details and character actions are set in stone. What I will do though is seriously consider everything they have to say, especially if more than one or two of the readers identify the same specific problem. Yes, it’s my book, but if some aspect of it’s not working for people, then that part probably needs to be either rethought, or rewritten to better accomplish whatever the goal was. This is the kind of invaluable information that can help you transform a rough first draft into a solid second draft, or take that second draft and build a polished manuscript that’s ready to be submitted to agents, editors, or publishers.

If you’re a writer, you need trusted readers. Without them, you’re going to have a very difficult time getting any kind of objective opinion on your drafts, and without those opinions, your work will never be as good as it could be. If you’re a reader, don’t be afraid to engage an author on a level beyond “I really enjoyed your book” … sending a thoughtful email with real critique in it might just land you the chance for an early look at new work. You’d be surprised how many talented authors, even ones who’ve been published before, are still actively looking for quality readers.

"Great job finishing your novel! Did you mean to spell your protagonist's name wrong in half of it?"

Behold: A Novel

You’ve finished it. Finally. After countless long nights fretting over your words, manipulating each sentence for maximum effect, and imbuing every paragraph with depth and symbolism, your journey is at last complete. Your novel is done. You set it aside (virtually, if you’ve been working on a word processor) and walk away, content with the knowledge that you’ve brought forth this thing into the world. Where once there was nothing, now there is something, and it’s there because you created it.

In the heady days that follow, you tell everyone you know that you finished your novel. You’re a proud parent, and you don’t even have to get up in the middle of the night or change messy diapers! It’s an amazing thing, really, and one about which many people dream. You want the world to know exactly how great it feels.

Time passes. The days come and go, and you begin to get the itch to take a second look, to bask in the glory of your novel and remember all the good times you had writing it. You yearn to once again be devastated by your dialog, pleased by your pacing, captivated by your characters … awed by your alliteration. Eventually you can’t wait any longer, and you settle in one evening and give it a read.

To your horror, you discover that the unthinkable has happened: while you weren’t looking, someone went and switched your perfect, beautiful baby with some kind of ugly, wart-riddled troglodyte. This isn’t yours! Can’t be. There’s no way you would have ended that sentence with a preposition. No chance you would have missed that obvious fragment. It is utterly inconceivable that you would have completely forgotten one of your characters mid-way through the book.

Yet that’s what you’re seeing now, and the grim realization begins to dawn on you: you’re not finished. You’re not even close. It’s time to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty again. It’s time to redraft.

Reasons to Redraft

For many authors, redrafting holds neither the mystique nor the excitement that they found in the initial act of creation; it’s just simply not as fun. For others, it’s quite painful to admit to themselves and to others that their perfect baby was never really so perfect to begin with. Some writers go into a permanent state of denial and never touch their first drafts again. If that sounds like you, keep this in mind: few of these writers ever get published.

If you want to be a professional author, you should prepare to write multiple drafts on every project. It’s a necessary step in the process, and once you’ve done it a few times, you may come to enjoy it for its own sake. There are many very good reasons to do it, and here are my top three:

1. To clean up obvious structural errors, typos, misspellings, and the like.
2. To improve the clarity, readability, and flow of the text.
3. To excise things that don’t work, improve things that only kind-of work, and occasionally to add or remove entire sections in the service of making a better book, story, article, or other piece.

Microsoft Word and other text-editors have helped a lot with item number one. Oh, don’t get me wrong — any editor worth his or her salt will tell you that there are still plenty of typos and misspellings left to fix no matter have many drafts an author has done. But spelling and grammar syntax-highlighting, auto-correct features and the like have made it much easier for the author to catch a lot of mistakes as they’re made. Still, every redraft should be done with an eye toward fixing these kind of errors.

Numbers two and three are where it starts to get complicated. Text tweaking and improvement can involve everything from simply switching the order of a couple of words, to making minor tweaks in a sentence, to striking and rewriting entire paragraphs. The goal? Making a better book — not for you, but for the reader. Let’s face it, if you’re writing for you and you alone, then it doesn’t matter so much how ugly your baby is.

Text Revisions

Text revisions are often relatively mild. Sometimes a few sentences just need tightening up. Let’s take a look at some text from the first draft of my novel The Broken God Machine, with some anticipated edits marked in red:

There was no time to celebrate this victory. Pehr turned ready to help Josep, only to see the hunter take a slashing hit to his midsection from the Lagos’s metal blade. Josep screamed and stumbled, going to one knee, and Pehr began to run toward the combatants already knowing he was too late. The Lagos, roaring in triumph, raised the blade over his head to swing down, just as Pehr had done to its companion. The blow would surely kill Josep, and Pehr found himself screaming in rage. Not now. Not yet. Not before they saved Nani.

Note: The red text in this instance is used for illustrative purposes. I don’t usually go through and do this with my drafts. I prefer to just keep a copy of the first draft open on one side of my monitor, and re-type the second draft from scratch on the other.

As you can see, a huge chunk of the text is going to get some amount of adjustment. This doesn’t mean it’s all going away or even changing substantially. Here’s how the edit looks:

There was no time to celebrate this victory. Pehr turned to help Josep, only to see the Lagos warrior’s metal blade slash across the hunter’s midsection. Josep screamed and stumbled, falling to one knee. The creature roared in triumph, raising the blade over its head for the killing blow. Pehr found himself running forward, shouting, knowing he was too late. Not now! he thought. Not yet. Not before we save Nani!

These aren’t earth-shattering changes, here. I’ve just gone in and altered the text so it’s a bit shorter, and flows a bit better. This, along with the basic spelling/typo checking mentioned above, is what agents and editors mean when they say they want a manuscript to be “polished” before they receive it. Polish can mean the difference between an accepted manuscript and one that gets rejected, so it’s certainly worth spending your time on!

The Big Changes

When it comes to excising or altering big chunks of text, it’s a lot harder to provide an example within the scope of this blog! I can tell you that in the first draft of Blood Hunt, I was unhappy with the way the relationship between two key characters played out over the course of things. One of my primary goals for the second draft was “get these two people to behave the way I want them to” (it’s funny, sometimes, how little control we have over our characters, especially in early drafts).

I ended up cutting out almost a dozen scenes — more than five thousand words — and creating two entire chapters that never existed in the first draft, in order to achieve what I wanted. It was a time-consuming and at times difficult process, but the end result is definitely superior. Of course, all of that new text now needs its own second draft! Fortunately, most of the rest of the novel has already been through one round of polishing.

If your first draft is a road map, then big changes are like cutting holes out of it. Before you start in on them, you should spend some time considering what it is you’re hoping to accomplish with the redraft, and have a solid idea for your new route in your head. It’s not enough to just start writing and hope for the best (sometimes that’s not even enough for the first draft). Identify your problem areas, and then identify solutions to those problems. Figure out how you’re going to get where you’re going.

Embrace the Process

Redrafting has to happen. No professional author out there, not matter how talented, can consistently produce pieces of any length that don’t need to go through multiple drafts. This very article was redrafted several times, piece by piece, in the hopes of making it clearer and more concise.

The key to preventing the process from becoming a boring slog is to focus on appreciating what you’re doing. After all, part of the joy of writing is finding just the right way to say what you’re trying to say. There is as much craft involved in honing a sentence as there is in coming up with the sentence in the first place.

Think of it as your chance to build the six million-dollar baby. It’s still your creation, still your beautiful child, still the thing to which you gave birth. It’s just bigger, faster, smoother, stronger and better than what was there before.

We redraft because we must, but there’s no reason not to enjoy the process, and there’s no reason to be afraid of it either. Get in there, get your hands dirty, and polish your work. You’ll be glad you did.