Draft Zero to Writing Hero Chapter IX: Back to the Revision Board
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| [Image: My Hermes Baby typewriter with text "Draft Zero to Writing Hero"] |
Chapter IX: Back to the Revision Board
As it turns out, once you sign with an agent, it's time for more - you guessed it - revisions. Christa and Daniele had already sent me a long, detailed email with their notes on GIRLS BREAK THINGS. They included several paragraphs about what they loved (which absolutely gave me LIFE at a time I really needed it), as well as several more on broader items that they thought needed work. I talked it all through with Qiren, we decided how best to address their notes...and then NaNoWriMo 2019 started and I decided to focus on that.
While I worked on my NaNoWriMo project, I kept ideas for GIRLS BREAK THINGS fermenting in the back of my mind. How would I address the issues with the antagonist? What if I changed this or that plot point, how would that affect the main character? Maybe that's why NaNoWriMo was...kind of a mess. I finished, but it was a truly awful first draft. On one page very late in the month, it contained the phrase "Then something very bad happened" twice. Granted, I was running on pre-vacation fumes - I was about to travel to Hawaii - and it was cold in the CLE. I guess those two years living in Minnesota had worn off while we were in Belgium.
Idk. I can give excuses all day.
[GIF: File cabinet drawer labeled "Excuses" filled with folders]
Anyway. With NaNoWriMo done, and that manuscript firmly shoved as far away as possible because it was a mess, I returned my attention to GIRLS BREAK THINGS. Since I'd already been through several version of the manuscript, it wasn't too hard to work in the notes I'd been given. After about three weeks, I'd addressed them all!We ended up doing three rounds of revisions. The first one was the biggest, the goal being to address those first notes Christa and Daniele had sent me, the ones that encompassed large chunks of the manuscript or had to do with adjusting entire characters. The second revision was all about fine-tuning, especially of the new material I'd added with the first revision. The final revision was mostly self-guided, focusing more on word choice (why do I use the word "just" so much, or say "we all" instead of "we"?) and reducing the overall word count. Along the way, I brainstormed with the two of them about specific lines that needed adjusting, or "what if I did X for this character?" It was super interesting to go back and look at the first draft, the one I'd written a year and a half ago, and see how things had changed.
A few weeks after I sent my reduced-word-count draft to Christa, I got an email with a list of editors - the manuscript was ready. All of a sudden, it was done - it was time to start sending GIRLS BREAK THINGS on submission!
[GIF: Awkwafina standing in front of piles of tires, raising her arms and yelling "My baby!"]
My baby manuscript was ready to be sent out into the world! Seemed like only yesterday it was just an idea nugget rattling around in my jetlagged brain...sigh. I looked into each and every editor, carefully studying their interests and wish lists. And part of me was super protective, unwilling to send GIRLS BREAK THINGS out on submissions because I didn't want anyone to say anything bad about it ever. At the same time, though, I knew it would never get into the hands of the readers who need it, the readers we wrote it for, if we didn't take a chance.And that brings us up to today! I'm still working on revisions from last year's NaNoWriMo, and GIRLS BREAK THINGS is still out there. Hopefully someday soon it will make its way to a bookstore or library near you...
To be continued...
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