Novel Update

Revision and Rewriting

My novel has taken physical form!
I saw the advice repeatedly: print your rough draft when you're ready to revise.  I wish I had followed it sooner.  It is just too easy to scroll through the words on a computer screen and miss even the most obvious errors.  On paper, typos, spelling/grammar mistakes, and whole passages that need work are blatantly apparent.  The once clean pages of my draft are now covered in notes and bright yellow highlighter, and I've only just begun.

Even though it only took me two months to write my first draft, the revision process will undoubtedly take longer.  I know it will take several rounds of revision and rewriting.  Right now I'm just reading through the paper version to find out exactly what needs to be fixed.  After that, I have two options: I can either rewrite the whole thing using my paper draft as notes, or I can just do in-line edits with a copy of my original draft.  I haven't decided which method I will use yet, but that largely depends on how much needs to be changed.

So far it looks like a lot, at least in the first two chapters.  I plan on switching the order up to make the story run more smoothly and to avoid "telling" and "info-dumping" as much.  Right now, the second chapter is a flashback.  Instead, I'll probably just start with the second chapter and let the story develop naturally from there.  This makes more sense because the story will start in the protagonist's society, so I'll be able to show the reader more of the information instead of telling about it.  I'm excited to see how it works out.  I hope that I'll be finished revising it (or at least finished with the second round) by December.  It is somewhat difficult because I am in my final semester of college and I want to finish strong, so most of my free-time goes to studying and reading for class, but I still try to do a few hours of work on my novel every week.  Thanks again to all of the feedback I have gotten from my beta-readers.  Thanks for reading!

-Libbi Duncan
The Cornucopia Woman

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