I have finished my second go-through of my book.
It is now in the hands of three beta readers. Two of them are tried-and-true, one is a newbie who took a film analysis class last year and loved it, so I gave her my book.
Am I freaked out? A little. The first draft of this novel was pretty messy. I tidied it up as best I could, but there’s only so much nip-and-tuck you can do to a story that’s not as good as it could be. Re-writing it from the beginning seems extremist, though, and not really necessary, so I didn’t and don’t plan to. Unless my beta readers tell me I should. I doubt they will.
Am I wrong in feeling a lot of pride over how much I managed to cut out of it? There was a lot of purple prose, a lot of run-on sentences that were just too flowery. I trimmed them all back to the most important words, cut what was repetitive. At the end, I cut 50,000 words from the original. A whole novel’s worth of superfluous descriptions. I shudder a little to think that was all in there, cluttering up the story.
I had a few readers tell me that the book was good, but they hadn’t gotten through it yet. I have a couple of readers who still — ten years later — say they haven’t gotten through it yet. When I say “well, it can’t be that good, if you haven’t even finished it,” they reply “oh, no! It’s good. I just haven’t had the time.” Hm. In ten years? One of those readers read my second book in a week, but still hasn’t finished the first one. “No time.” Hm. Sorry if I don’t believe you. My first book just wasn’t that well paced. I hope I have fixed that now!
I took a week off from “In the Dark” after handing it off to the beta readers. I’m not sure if I should go through it at the same time they are, wait for them to get back to me, start working on finishing the sequel, or start working on finishing the next stand-alone. I’ve been tapping away at the stand-alone, just to keep my hand in. I might finish that first, then come back and get the sequel done.
Sorry this post isn’t really about anything. I guess I am a little anxious.
