Summer Revision Madness

Hey, remember the three books I finished and three new ones I wrote in the back half of last year?

Yeah, that was wild. I’m so glad I did that. I actually felt like a writer again, and I was able to get books scheduled for publication two years out.

Writing a book is not the end of the story, though–especially mine, as I leave helpful notes like [fix this]. It usually takes a couple more drafts to get things in workable shape to then go to editors to help make it pretty. Especially with the frantic pace I kept up last year–like the 200K I wrote in like five weeks the end of Oct through November–the books after that initial draft need a lot of work.

So while last year was The Year of the Zero Drafts, this summer is going to be Revision Madness.

(if it was a song, it would be to the tune of Reefer Madness)

Charon’s Gold went from 108K words to the 135K draft I sent for copyedits last night, to give an idea of how things change draft to draft. It’s a lot of work. (Already, TKB is up to 90K and AWKoD is 100K; Watcher will easily hit 95K.)

And I’ve got a lot of books to fix.

So last year I wrote Witch Hunt, Dweller on the Threshold, The Killing Beach, Charon’s Gold, Watcher of the Woods, and A Wild Kind of Darkness.

Dweller is already available, Charon is off for copyedits. July is devoted to another round on Witch Hunt (I did a quickie in May for patrons) and Soul Spell (Elis #3, in progress at Patreon). August is for Watcher of the Woods, and September is All Waverly All the Time with The Killing Beach out in May and Darkness out six months later next year.

All that should give me the breathing room to go back to writing some raw first drafts for a few months in between copyedits, but we’ll see. I’ve already written two this year (Alone at Night, which is Waverly 3, and Soul Spell, which is Elis 3) but I am not one to rest on my laurels. At least NaNoWriMo in November (I’d like to write a new Waverly book then).

I had big plans to dive into Witch Hunt today, but it’ll have to wait until tomorrow night after work I think, as I should probably rest. I finished Charon’s Gold revisions last night at 4:30 and didn’t actually fall asleep until after 6, so I don’t think my head’s on straight. I also discovered I had enough points to get a free pizza today, so after I pick that up in half an hour I’ll try lounging in bed reading or watching TV for the rest of the day (hopefully).

Then Revision Madness shall continue!

And as usual, a big shoutout to Patreon supporters, particularly those from last year who bought me the time to write an extra one day a week–that was a huge boosts to getting so much done in 2021.