April Camp Nano and Other Happenings

Oh geez.  It’s been a while since I last posted.  Between finishing up initial revisions to get my book ready for beta readers and everyday life, there hasn’t been much to report.  But I suppose I should do a post just so it appears I’m not dead.  Besides, I need to document that I’ve been busy these last couple of months.

First up, revisions!  I spent a good chunk of time going through and revising my book, Entangle.  I wanted to get it polished up enough to have initial beta readers give it a go.  I set a deadline for myself to have it out for betas on my birthday and I only overshot that deadline by about a week, so not too shabby.

I decided to bite the bullet and try out some editing software during my revisional process and I decided on ProWritingAid after researching the many applications on the market.  I found that the program isn’t perfect but it was invaluable when finding things like repetitive wording and overused words. It even pointed out some particularly bad writing that I couldn’t see because I’ve read and reread the text so many times.  Of course, the program won’t take the place of a flesh and blood editor but I hope that it makes the reading process easier for my betas.

A total word count update for Entangle: 86,421 after a rewrite and 2 further revisions.  That’s down from 96,883 from the rewrite stage.

By the time the initial revisions were done I was ready to throw the whole manuscript on a tire fire if I had to read it one more time.  It’s been a couple of weeks now and the feeling has subsided somewhat which is good because I got my manuscript back from my first beta and I’m going to go through his notes today and sit down and discuss them sometime this week.

Also happening this week: The beginning of Camp Nano.  The beginning of camp has been a rough one for me so far.  It started over the weekend and the weekend was very busy at my house, not to mention exhausting.  The last two days this week haven’t been much different.  I’ve had to do adulting/parenting things and it’s really cut into my work schedule.  Hopefully today will be better since the only thing I’m expecting today is the delivery of a new stove this morning…..*crosses fingers it takes less time than the fridge delivery did*

This camp nano has me working on a different book that is set in the same universe/story world of my Eve Williams books.  Except this book has nothing to do with Eve.  It is about different characters in a different city dealing with their own problems and it is a standalone novel.  Part of my brain is screaming that I should move on to something completely different while the other part is desperate to get this story out.  Obviously, the desperate part of my brain has won out since I won’t be happy until I have it on the page.

Hopefully my Friday wordcount post will be a positive one, especially since I’m writiing something new and can give wordcount updates.

Until Friday, Cheers!