The Beauty in Ugly

My re-write is DONE (for now). I figure I've probably written over 200,000 words to get a polished 90,000 word, 370 page manuscript, but that's just how the process works. At least for me. Maybe it's different for others, but I don't think so. The first ugly draft has to exist before it can be beautiful.

So for those of you who read and critiqued my ugly early drafts, thanks. I wouldn't have learned as quickly without your feedback. I'm not one that re-reads books very often. If a book grabs me, I'll read it again a few years later. But in writing The Devil's Key, I've re-read the story so often that I can scroll right to the page where certain events happen without having to search. That's a LOT of re-reading and there were days when I was so sick of it.

I'm not now, though. Now, I'm excited. It's becoming beautiful. The choppy parts are smoothed, the extra dialog tags are gone, the characters are deeper, and the plot is tighter. I even have moments when I forget that my characters aren't real people. Jeff thinks I'm half crazy sometimes. But of course, I am. I have six kids, I'm general contracting a house, and I'm trying to break into the publishing world, each of which requires a certain level of insanity to try in the first place. So I must be three times crazier than everybody else. But seriously, I love the creative process that goes into writing and if I had my wish, I'd write six hours a day, publish a book a year, and putter around in my garden whenever I wasn't operating the mom taxi.

Now on to find an agent...

Third re-write, fifth revision

It's amazing how many people are writing books - like one person in ten. Seriously. It seems like every other day I meet someone new who is in some stage of writing one. So naturally, I ask questions. It turns out that some folks only have a story idea and haven't actually started writing (an obvious flaw in logic there, but whatever). Others have made it past that hurdle and are part way through. A few actually make it to a first revision. It seems most quit at or before this stage, which is a good thing or agents would drown in a flood of query letters and wouldn't accept any at all.

But now I'm on my third re-write and fifth revision. Am I there yet? Will this revision be THE ONE? No idea. Honestly. I hope so and I know I need to send out another round of queries to put some action behind that hope, but I'd rather skip it. I hate the query process. I wonder if agents can tell a first-draft newbie from a writer who's slogged through several re-writes. I hope so. Are they willing to invest a little time to help a writer grow, or do they have so many prospects that they only accept perfect work? 'Cause if that's the case, I'm doomed. I don't think there's any such thing as a perfect draft. So why am I trying so hard to produce one? Oh yeah...I don't have an agent yet. So my goal for this next month is to finish revising the last one hundred pages of my story and send it off to Elizabeth while I research more agents to send it to.