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Monday, November 8, 2010

Finally--Rewrite off to readers (and agent) and what I learned

I know I've been absolutely silent on here and I apologize. I've been dedicating myself to completing the rewrite of my book LIFE AND BETH and it's taken WAY longer than I ever imagined. But, finally, finally, finally, I finished. I'm not fooling myself that more revisions aren't in store before my lovely agent Victoria Marini subs, but it feels good to have reached this milestone.

And you know what I learned? No matter what your writing method is--seat of the pantster, outliner, whatever, there are no shortcuts. I wrote the first draft of this book almost a year ago, in a very random way. It was DREADFUL. Then I created my (very pretty and useful looking) plot map. That helped a lot. THEN, I started to submit to agents and most of them came back and told me--yeah--we like your premise, we like your writing, but the whole thing falls apart like a flabby souffle.

So, then I downloaded Scrivener and used THAT to help me RE-OUTLINE the whole mess--and still, still I had a long haul ahead of me.

So what's the lesson here? The lesson is that there is no substitute for an awesome critique group and beta readers who target your weak spots like a laser beam. Thank you to all of you geniuses for getting me through this!

I am very excited to sink my teeth into my next project, which is writing and illustrating a picture book. There is also my untitled WIP, which I am going to outline on Scrivener FIRST.

8 comments:

  1. Congrats on finishing your rewrite, Lisa! No short cuts!! That is so true.

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  2. Congrats on finishing this version! Have fun with your next project. :D

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  3. WOO HOO!!! And yep - no shortcuts is right!

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  4. Congrats on finishing the rewrite! Yep. Totally agree, readers and critique partners are worth their weight in gold. Sometimes you are just too close to the story to see the weak spots.

    I'm a plot chick, so I can't even imagine trying to write anything without a scene outline.

    Good luck on your next project! :)

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  5. Support is so important. How did you like Scrivner?

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  6. I think it is a great plotting tool. It helped me when I needed to shift major elements around. I'm going to use it to plot out my picture book and my next WIP and see if it can streamline the process for me. I think I will still create a plot map and then translate that into Scrivener. But right now, I'm just going to draw my characters for fun--la-la-la-lah! (pssst--so far my agent seems very happy with the rewrite. We shall see!)

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