I’ve been making great progress on my writing goals this past month. When I finished drafting Broken Tethers, I had a plan for how I wanted to go about revisions. I knew there were some things in the plot that weren’t quite working, and, thanks to an alpha reading session by my critique group (shoutout, Tomeworks members!), I was able to identify what most of them were and come up with general directions for how to fix them. So, I let it rest for a few months, then got started on my plan.
First, I wanted to read the book myself. I hadn’t yet read it all the way through (not since I put it all together, at least). But the thought of reading such a long project on my computer screen was daunting, and besides, I’d already seen every chapter on the screen. It would be easy to miss things like typos and awkward sentences with the familiar medium, and I wanted to trick my brain into thinking it was seeing something brand-new. So, I had a copy of the manuscript printed (all 603 pages!) and spiral-bound. Then, red pen in hand, I read it aloud.
I’d heard about this trick from other authors, that reading aloud makes your brain slow down and really register every word on the page. But, having never undertaken a project of quite this scale, I’ve never needed to use it before. Short stories and novellas are a little easier to keep straight in my head while I’m drafting, so they tend to not need very extensive revisions in my experience. For this project, reading aloud was an amazing trick. I found minor continuity errors, awkward sentences, typos, and came up with more solidified ideas for the larger part of the revisions as I read. This is something I’ll definitely do for all future novel-length projects.
Now that I’m finished reading through the manuscript, I’ve started in on the actual revising. I’m not very far into that part yet, but I’m excited for how the book will turn out once I’m done. I’ve already got a few beta readers lined up (you know who you are, I appreciate you!), and I’m looking forward to getting their feedback.
I have other novel-related goals for April, too. Since I’m getting closer to the “querying” step in my publishing journey, I’ll need to spend some time in April assembling my query packet. That means writing a query letter and a synopsis. The query letter is essentially me pitching my book to agents, and while I’m concerned about that because I’ve never been a great salesperson, I’m more concerned about writing a synopsis. HOW am I supposed to distill a 600-page book down to ONE? But that’s a problem for another day. I’ll figure it out.
Outside of working on my novel, I’ve been busy! I’ve been working with the rest of the Tomeworks editing team to produce content for our website and social media. We might have a couple of honest-to-goodness clients hiring us in the coming weeks, so that’s exciting!
I’ve also been participating in writerly events, acting as a panelist for a few different conferences. Last weekend, I was a panelist for Understanding POVs with Storycrafting Sessions, a virtual conference hosted by Weeknight Writers. Honestly I thought it would be scary to be a panelist, and that I didn’t have enough expertise to talk about writing-related topics. But, in participating in these panels and talks, I’ve realized that was just the impostor syndrome, following me from graduate school into my chosen career. I’ve been writing professionally for about seven years now, and I’ve learned a lot, enough to make me, if not an expert, at least knowledgeable enough to have informed opinions on many writing-related topics.
Anyway, April is going to be an interesting month writing-wise. Getting ready to query means I’ll be working on some things I don’t have a lot of practice writing. So I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes.
As always, thanks for reading. Here’s a picture of the pretty flowers growing in our yard to celebrate springtime.
<3 Anna