First and foremost, I’ve got some great news on the book front. As a brief (seriously, very brief recap), I revised about 18 pages in June. For more on that, go check out this previous blog post.
The good news for July? Even with about a week less time (since my previous post was a week late), I got 42 pages done. And what that looks like is finishing up chapter 19, completing chapters 20-23, and starting 24. I honestly could have gotten more done, but I was camping for a few days this past week. So, the percentage counter on the home page is all the way up to 55%. Woot woot!
Now, for a little more in depth look at what was revised. The heavy rewrites in chapter 19 were finished and I feel pretty good about them (for now). Chapter 20, which flips back to Kinnick’s perspective, was in a little rougher shape than I remembered. It was kind of clunky writing to be honest, but I think I improved it a bit. Plus, we get a great scene with a relatively new villain for the book at that point; Aila. I actually really enjoy her as a character and there’s an awesome interaction with Merith that foreshadows some fun stuff further on in the book.
Chapter 21 honestly didn’t need as much revising. I remember writing this chapter, and I really enjoyed the descriptors I put in previously. So, I left it somewhat alone which also made the revision process that much easier.
Chapter 22 is a flashback sequence. It also didn’t need too much help as there’s some fun dialogue in there. The end was a little clunky, but overall, not too bad of an edit.
Chapter 23 flips it back to Kinnick. This chapter was good, but I thought I was a little too heavy handed on some of the writing near the end. I ended up cutting a bunch out and rewriting it to flow better. Again, I really like the way Kinnick comes off the page now that I have all these revised story beats in my head from the previous draft. While this chapter isn’t necessarily the most important to that overall arc of the plot, I think it was great for getting a little deeper peek at Kinnick and his mindset.
I only got about 3 pages in to chapter 24 which is mostly a good interaction sequence between Kinnick and Trim. They finally get a little time together to banter and to show some different sides of themselves. We get a little more seriousness from Trim and we get a little compassion from Kinnick. It’s always nice to round out a character so they feel a bit more realistic.
So that’s essentially what’s what for July. I’m currently on page 211 of what is currently a 385-page book, so a good 175 pages to go (don’t come at me on the math, I’m counting 211 as a page since I haven’t finished that one yet). If I can keep the pace on roughly 40 pages a month, I can have this draft done by the end of the year. Again, not exactly a record-setting pace or even, really, the pace I wanted earlier this year when I started revising, but it’s a lot better than 18 pages and/or never even finishing the book at all. One note is that there are more significant rewrites in the somewhat near future for scenes that need to be completely reworked, characters that need to be taken out/replaced, and the ending that needs some heavy changes. Still, I think 40 pages a month is a pretty realistic goal. That’s about 10 pages a week which isn’t that much. And hey, if I can power through and get, say, 15 pages a week for those chapters that don’t need as much work, all the better for those heavy rewrites.
Until next time!