Last week went by in a blur. Thousands and thousands of words were written on my recent edit of Daughters of Misfortune. (For those keeping track, I’m currently on Draft 4.) I don’t usually do rewrites this extensive, thanks to an outlining system I’ve developed over the years. By the time I set pen to paper, as it were, I have a solid grip on characters, story arc, details, things I want to reveal and when, backstory, etc.
I do leave room for changes that come when I get into the flow of things. That’s inevitable and a good thing.
But with this book, some of the feedback I got from early betas made me see, not quite a plot hole, but a hole in character motivation that had to be addressed. Although it’s a lot of work to rewrite almost the entire first quarter of the book, it was the right thing to do and the book is so much stronger.
So this is what I’m doing. I have a panel of brand new beta readers for Beta Round 2 (I wanted to use people who hadn’t read the first version), and the book will be on their desks in a week or two.
Progress continues!