Hello, all! Even though I’m a writer, sometimes I forget to tell people exactly how my writing is going and what I’m working on. Crazy, right?! Anyways, recently I’ve had a little bit more time for writing, so I wanted to share my progress.
If you didn’t know, I’m currently working on the second book in my Young Adult Speculative Fiction trilogy. I wrote it first back in ~2015-16 (not sure of the exact date) and it was TERRIBLE. Even though my writing has improved since then, even my edits weren’t up to par with how I write today. So, I began rewriting book two in August 2019 (I think) and I believe I should be done before August 2020.
I recently hit over fifty-five thousand words in book two, which is a HUGE milestone. Although I kept the general plot and structure of the book, I rewrote it from scratch, unlike book one, where I kept a lot of stuff from the previous drafts. I’m on chapter nine out of twelve and it is slowly drawing to a close. (My chapters are super long currently, but when I edit, I’ll separate them out into roughly 30 chapters).
Now that I’m spending time every day writing, I’ve found it much easier to return to my story. I like to mull over ideas for the next scene I’m going to write during the day (if I have time) so that when I go back to writing, I know exactly what I want to do. However, this book was not as plotted out as I like for my books to be. I normally like to have an incredibly detailed plot that has 3-5 very important things happening per chapter, along with other notes of side plots and other events. With this book, I only had the printed copy of the book that I’d made marks on. I followed the general events in the chapters of that book, but I did a LOT of improvising throughout. It was very refreshing to mix plotting and pantsing into something that worked well for me! (Obviously, this won’t be feasible with first drafts, but it definitely helped).
One of the major things I was trying to improve with this writing was the length. I used to be a severe underwriter who skimped on details to try to get the general plot down, but no longer! The long process of rewriting has helped me learn the importance of details, descriptions, and drawing out plot in a suspenseful way.
Anyways, my writing is going well. I’m hoping to get more done this weekend because I’m not working, but we will see! Even though I’m trying to stay focused on rewrites, my mind is constantly whirring with new story ideas—which hopefully will be drafted SOON. I hope you enjoyed my writing update—if you’re a writer, tell me how your writing is going in the comments below!
Much love,
Katie