I finally buckled down to begin what I hope is my final round of edits for Scarlet. (I'll likely continue to edit and tweak it until I can sell it but well, let's stay optimistic here.)
I knew that this round would be the toughest, but tonight was brutal. I sat down with the notes, comments, and corrections from my group of fabulous readers and my latest copy of Scarlet then I went nuts. I literally pulled apart the entire first chapter and put it back together. The first page has exactly four sentences that are the same before I started this process tonight. Everything else has been edited, rewritten or changed.
Not that it was bad before. It was alright. Okay. Average. I wanted better than that. I want to get Scarlet published. It's been my dream for so long to become a published author and with Scarlet, I have a tale that I think that there is a possibility. Hopefully I can make that dream a reality. If nothing else, I want to give it my best effort.
I'm not deluding myself into thinking that this will be easy. Not by a long shot. I am completely aware of how tough the competition is out there and just how difficult it will be just to get an agent to read my story. And I know that I likely have a mountain of rejection letters to wade through before I get there. Yet part of me has to remain hopeful. If I lose that spark of hope, what's the point in even trying? I might as well go back to tucking my stories onto the top shelf of my closet.
So instead, I have to push myself through this round of edits. I need to work harder on this novel than I've ever done before on a story. I am not afraid to shred my tale and piece it back together. Not if that's what it's going to take to make this story shine. Every comment I've received from my readers is being looked at carefully. And I have to say that I have some amazing girls reading for me. Their comments are tough, smart and for the most part, right. They've seemed to pick up on the little things that I had missed during my last round of edits and things that I didn't even realize needed fixing.
As I read through my edited version of Chapter 1 tonight, (outloud to my dogs - who looked at me like I was slightly mad) I was able to kick my self doubt to the curb.I'm sure it will be back with a vengence as I wait to hear from agents but for now, I am proud of what I have done with this crazy little story. Even if it never sees the light of day, I am pleased with how it has turned out.
So this turned out to be more of a pep talk to myself rather than any type of blog that makes sense, but that's okay. Sometimes a self-motivating talk is important.
Especially when I know that I have 20 more chapters to go.
