Guess what? I'm actually writing! series (#5 - complete!)

Guess What?! (5):

And it’s a wrap.

One month and 4 previous posts later (which you can all now find HERE for your ease in searching) and I have another complete MS.

But you know these things never end, not if we don't want them too. Have you ever read a book and wanted to rewrite the ending, or you were rooting for the author to take it another way…*ahem*Pottershouldadied*ahem*…

I ended this yesterday night and almost immediately wanted to jump back in and edit, but I also knew I wasn’t ready so I’ve stepped away. AND I plan to stay away for the rest of the month. I’m thinking a week break is long enough before I decided to jump into first rounds of revisions.

            I did already mention that Bad-Blooded Billionaire became more of a 2^nd version and less a re-write. You’re all thinking, “doesn’t revising mean rewriting?” and it does, but what I mean is that if I went back in and changed the names of the H/h and some other characters transferred from the first version of this story then I would have nearly two different stories.

The plots are just that dissimilar.

At first this totally freaked me out, especially since I caught on to these big changes earlier. I ‘what if’d’ a whole new hook to the plot and then it took off from there and as you can see with this extra series post, the word count also clearly got WAY out of hand.

If I were contracted I might have deservedly wigged, but I’m not so I let the story go and the characters tell me their ending (with a little nudging from me through a bit of plotting).

And there’s all the good that came out of this. I had something to do for the last bit of summer hooray before school. I found out I’m a bonafide morning writer. I’m better off dragging myself out of bed to get something down rather than push it back to later hours—which btw will work with my coming fall schedule.

Also learned I don’t do word counts. Like set word counts. I’ve been talking about hitting this-that today and so on, but I really don’t do well with setting myself up for a certain amount of words. Instead I set myself up with a time schedule of 3-4 hours every morning where I would only write. No distractions, foreground or background—just me and my word document.

I also work way better if I write daily, no breaks. Even if I get only 100 words down for the day (which I did that very first day…184 to be exact) it helped me keep the momentum going.

I know some authors don’t work this way while their on a project. I’m not one of those writers. The way I see it I’ll write through daily until I’m done the project and then I’ll take my break.

Now what I didn’t do that I’m regretting is plotting/outlining before writing BBB 2.0. So when I jump into version 3 (or rewrites using what I’ve got from both MSs) I’ve decided to begin by writing a synopsis. A short one that captures what I’d like to do, and given I’m writing category romance I can outline the H/h’s goals and motivations to produce strong internal and external conflicts and dismantle any plot points that don’t work.

So 1) break, 2) synopsis, and 3) rewrite/revision.

Thanks for sticking around with this series. It was super fun capturing my thoughts throughout this process.

I know writers have heard this before, but I’ll say it again: writing is a lonely task. There’s a lot of thinking up here and all that time alone can work wonders on anxiety and nerves…in a bad way.

It helped talking to my sisters near the end of this project, but I also found it almost cathartic being able to sum up my problems. I will enter revisions with no assumptions of its being easy. Yet it feels good going in with a plan.

As for future series-related posts, I’m hoping to cook up something during the revision process. Still there’s time to see how my schedule looks like fall and whether school will eat me alive or not.

Until then, take care and check out the other ‘Guess What?!’ posts if you haven’t read them!