Crunch time again - Final Edits
Thanks for all your feedback so far - and keep them coming!
Happy Monday!
Many of you have been reading my novel chapter by chapter, and some of you even got the full manuscript at one shot. Many of you got back to me with some incredible feedback. Some of you didn’t — and that, I consider feedback too — I noticed that those who didn’t make it through all seem to be stuck at the exact few places. So, that’s really on me, not you.
In short - the first 20 chapters of my novel need to be shortened, my main character needs more internal monologue so he’s not such an NPC, and I need to mostly cut out the scenes I didn’t have fun writing, because it turns out, people didn’t have fun reading those exact chapters. Funny how that works.
I went back and tried to see how my book works in the framework of Story Genius by Lisa Cron (great book btw) and realized that the only thing missing is I don’t have a countdown timer to some exciting event that keeps the reader riveted. Too late to fix that, though it would have really added to the novel. But I’m mostly there for the rest of the framework, and it’s just going to need some moving chapters around and light editing. We’re done with invasive surgery, and now we’re focusing on some botox and fillers.
So, it’s November, of National Novel Writing Month fame. NaNoWriMo got disgraced for a few reasons - their forum moderators were using the forum to groom young children, they were too pro-AI for a lot of their user base, and, really, there needs to be better goals than 50,000 words in one month.
My goal is to be done with editing all 205k words of my manuscript (and maybe have it end up at least 20-30k words lighter) by Thanksgiving.
So, for the month of November, I’m not going to be doing my Monday Cup Of Links or Tipu Sultan. I hope I make a significant dent by then and we’re back to regular programming in December. The original plan was for me to suck it up and do it all, but then I got sick all of last week, and my best-laid plans have been derailed and I’m already behind.
But I’ll be continuing to put out my paywalled novel chapters, and since I’m not inundating your inbox with as many emails, I’ll send free previews of my chapters to everyone. If any of you want to read the whole manuscript, please reach out!
I feel like I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I’d be happy to have India House out in the world, so I can move on to the next book, on the Ghadar Party, set in San Francisco and Germany. I think I understand all the mistakes I made with the first one (I’ve had many years to make tons of mistakes) and I’m excited to apply my learnings to that.
But first — I ought to take this to the finish line! Thank you for your kindness and unwavering support through my journey of writing and discovery.