Posted in The Shadow Men, Writing
The Dark Lands Week 14
This was a rough week of editing. I had a few chapters that just didn’t want to cooperate. I also had a brain fart moment when I didn’t save after two hours of work and my program crashed. The crash really ticked me off because I used to manage a computer center and that was always the first thing I told people who came into the lab.
I should be done with the third draft this week. At that point I will print it out and give it too a few very critical friends and maybe two of my Twitter or Goodread friends. I like the idea of giving it to people who really don’t know me and getting an unbiased view point.
In the biased view point I finished reading the book to my eighth grade class. Even more importantly they reacted with genuine emotion in the appropriate places. I would have been horrified if I had howls of laughter go up during the kiss that I spent much of the book building up to. My wife also assures me that she is really enjoying the book and looks forward to reading every chapter.
In the end I am happy with what I have created. I like it and that is what I had set out to do. I will have read the book three times by the time I am done editing this week. I have tried to hammer out all the weak spots and feel like I have some genuinely good moments in the story.
I also came to a decision about book two. I wasn’t sure if I was going to dive right back in and write the next book. After I finished reading it to my class I knew the answer. I have to keep going. I want to know what is in store for my characters next. I surprised myself so many times with where this story took me that I am sure that the second book will be equally as unexpected. I plan to start writing the second book around July 1 and have it finished sometime in September.
In the mean time it is off to Maui to finish the editing in style. I mean really, typing that last sentence on the balcony overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It doesn’t get any better than that. I should talk my wife into making it a tradition.
>july 1 i'll begin the count down 🙂