Edit vs Rewrite

A quick note to let you know that the price of my ebook, Magic High has dropped to $0.99 on Amazon and Smashwords. Other distributors should catch up with the price change soon.

When I finished my first draft of my latest novel, I sat back and thought, ‘Great! Done. Nothing left but edits.’

*Cue laughter*

I edited a few chapters, made minor changes in sentence structure, fixed plot holes, checked for consistency, and all that fun stuff that needs to be done before the book can be called complete. And then a couple of people in my critique group mentioned that my main character was very similar to Tabetha from Magic High.

Oops.

Then I realized, it’s impossible to change the personality of the main character in any way without completely changing the entire story. After all, the novel is written in first point perspective. I may as well have decided to write the story from a completely different characters point of view.

After a lot of groaning and whining and arguments with myself, I finally accepted the fact that the book will be better after a full rewrite. And after all, the whole point of editing is to make the story as awesome as possible, right?

There is always the fear that rewrites will never end. All I have to do is look at my comic, Never to see rewrites gone wrong. However, I'm confident that this draft is much stronger than my first, and I’m hopeful that once it’s complete, I’ll be able to move on to final edits and then copy edits.

*Fingers crossed*

Rewriting complete drafts is a part of my writing process, but I know that not every author believes it’s necessary. How much editing do you do? Have you ever rewritten so many times that you lost interest in the story altogether?

Work Space - Day Five

The walls are done! No more painting ever again, until I start the stairwell. Hopefully in the next day or two I'll be able to do the final reveal with everything set up and in place.

I am exhausted. I don't know why I thought I could do this all on my own in a weekend. I think it's because they do it in those design shows and I wanted to prove that I could do it too. Never mind that they have a whole team of people working on everything.

A couple of problems that I have with the basement right now is that there is not nearly enough light. This can be fixed with a floor lamp or two, but I probably won't be getting that for a while. Sad. Another thing is the stairwell.

It's not just the fact that it's not finished, but also it scares the crap out of me. Out of the corner of my eye I keep seeing that white blotch which is about the height a person's head and I think that someone is coming down the stairs. Never mind that not even a ninja could get down those stairs without them squeaking.

Otherwise the whole experience has been a lot of fun. Exhausting and time consuming, but fun. Mark keeps talking about getting the other rooms of the house done, which would be nice, but I am not about to start any time soon. I'm just looking forward to enjoying my very own room to get some work done. Time for some much needed sleep.

Work Space - Day Four

I'm really not one to miss a deadline, even a self imposed one, but this one I missed entirely. I managed to start painting today! I painted almost all day in fact, but you wouldn't be able to tell by looking at the room. My entire body hurts from crouching in awkward positions to try and paint so low. Hopefully tomorrow will go a little faster since it will be spent mostly on the upper half of the walls.


So, not much to say about day four other than, ouch.