Why Haven't I Updated Once Yet?

I’m dead. X___X

Okay, actually, it’s because I’ve been polishing House of Gears to submit it to the amazing @kimi-reads-and-writes so she can edit it for me in time for Pitch Madness. I’m hoping, anyway. I’ve got a good feeling. I’ve restored a lot of the original plot points I’d initially taken out because I thought they would make the book impossible to sell. Every time I do that, I end up regretting it, so I’m just going to stop now unless an actual industry pro tells me otherwise.

Me and Institutionalized Feminism

So, I was editing my book (I tend to obsessively polish a ms before a contest and there’s one coming up at the end of the month) and I realized how…not very girl-power it was. Which is weird, because when I came up with my girl Juliet, one of the reasons I set this ms where I did is because the Wild West was one of the few places in 1800s America where girls could be bad@$$ without it being as “shocking” because, like, farm girls and female ranch owners could ride horses, cook, shoot, do farm work, mend and often make their own clothes, knew some first-aid because doctors lived sometimes hours away…and if a girl was educated, for whatever reason, wanting to go to college, you basically had a recipe for Wild West Hermione - a nerd who could fight. And I wanted to make sure my girl didn’t disdain the “girly” stuff like makeup and dresses because hey, if Catwoman can look hot and kick @$$, any girl has the option.

But as I’m reading through my ms, I’m seeing all of these missed opportunities and inconsistencies. Juliet has a sister - they have one scene together. Granted, the plot of the book is the sister is kidnapped and Juliet has to save her, but as I’m editing, my brain is like, “Oh, we could have this cute sister-scene right there real quick!” and I’m thinking, “Why didn’t I do that before?” Especially because the sister is such a hugely motivating force for Juliet. Why didn’t I try to develop that more? I don’t know. It never occurred to me.

Juliet has a wicked stepmother and negligent dad, but she has female friends and more responsible and loving mother-figures…but only one of them (the group consists of like 6 girls) has a large role and I cut it short halfway through the book when characters have a parting of the ways. That second part isn’t so bad except that no other girl steps into the vacuum and instead the role is now filled by a boy - who had his own role already. Why didn’t I bring one of the other girls forward? I have no idea. It never even occurred to me to do it. No one even tries; there’s no “I’m not ready to have someone take So-and-So’s place yet” or anything. It’s a non-thing.

Even my mythos lacks some opportunities and world-building points. The whole plot spun out from two sisters who were queens who hated each other but I never even gave a reason why (I fixed this in my edits but still) and nobody ever asked and I never thought of one. Everyone in the story just assumes two sisters wanting to literally murder each other is normal, even though Juliet’s relationship with her sister is so strong (and a few other characters have good relationships with their siblings). But when a male character is shown to be a betrayer, Juliet asks why? She questions a lack of reliability from a male but not from a female.

This never even popped into my brain as being a thing, whether good or bad. I never noticed the lack of strong foundations for the relationships between girls. I never noticed the double-standard against female characters. I didn’t even realize it was there. And I was going out of my way to try to make this book girl-positive to begin with.

I don’t know…I’m not sure what I’m trying to say except to maybe wonder how terribly prevalent all of it might be in media I didn’t create myself and I (or other people) never even noticed…

I Was Asked Would I Write a NB/Genderfluid Character

I have a book in the works (reading An Ember in the Ashes and Throne of Glass really makes me want to work on it), working title is Hallows. And it’s about this fantasy world where there are generally regular people like us and then these people called Hallows, and a certain number are born every generation, and they have special powers because they’re anthropomorphic personifications of certain traits of humanity - hope, joy, wonder, fear, etc. Things that have had a major impact on the development of human culture (hope and fear have influenced a great many solar festivals).

So in this world, in some countries Hallows are considered normal people with jobs like how doctors, lawyers, bakers, and butchers are just normal people with jobs. In some countries they’re revered in the same was as oracles and priests. In others, they’re considered royalty. And in some, they’re second class citizens or even enslaved or considered “enemies of the state.”

And my 2 characters - Maya and Sethsis - are each Hallows. Maya is a hope-Hallow and Sethsis is a joy-Hallow. Sethsis is also genderfluid. And the two of them are from different kingdoms - Maya from a kingdom where Hallows are just people, Sethsis where Hallows are treated like royalty - but they’re both kidnapped (Sethsis is disguised as a regular guy just chilling with normal peeps at the time) and sold into slavery to fight in the gladiator pits in one of the other kingdoms. They team up in order to survive until they can fight their way to the final tournament, where they have to survive for a moon in the wilds with other Hallows and soldiers and competitors trying to kill them.

So it’s sort of like The Hunger Games meets Ancient Rome with Egyptian and Yoruban mythology thrown in through the lens of Rise of the Guardians.

But one of my leads is Sethsis, who is genderfluid. I just need a name other than genderfluid for this book because as it has been pointed out to me before, high fantasy novels wouldn’t use the same words we would for things like that.

Someone Asked If I Could've Written ToG/ACOTAR Better Than Sarah...

I think if I’d had the idea for Throne of Glass, I could’ve done it better based on my technique. BUT. It’s not just technique that makes a book. It’s not even mostly or even half technique. The ideas Sarah J. Maas brought to the book series (so far, anyway; I’m only 2 books in) are something I don’t think I could have created better than she did, and they are what make the series so good.

I think, other than some passive voice (which I only noticed because I’ve been slashing it out of a manuscript I’m editing) in ACOTAR/ACOMAF, there’s no real flaws in them except for the way she describes the sexual aspects, which I skimmed over anyway. And I will say that the aspects of ACOTAR that she took from The Black Jewels were changed in such a way that they were still unique and interesting and I had no issues with the things I noticed coming from TBJ.

What Are Filter Words?

Filter words are words that filter the immediacy of a story through the lens of a character, but do so in a way that isn’t necessary. Here are some examples.

“Romeo felt the anger boiling in his blood as he stared at Mercutio’s corpse” could be rewritten as “Anger boiled in Romeo’s blood as he stared at Mercutio’s corpse.”

“Feyre smelled the stinging scent of paint thinner” could become “The scent of paint thinner stung Feyre’s nose.”

Sometimes filter words work and are even necessary, but most of the time they’re not really and can slow down the pace a lot.

How I Edit a Manuscript

Basically it goes like this.

Notebook round: I write down what’s what and what I need and different world details and plot points in my notebook. I have a lovely set of pens just for this. They give good scratch and it inspires me.

Rough Round One, Fight! I type up my manuscript, chapter by chapter. I used to do it out of order but my scene transitions were always too jarring, so I ditched that bit. I refer to my notes as I type, possibly have to stop occasionally to revisit the notebook round and flesh out new avenues of plotting-ness. And as I type, I edit. Now, I don’t recommend this for anyone because a lot of people get super hung up on every word they type being perfect, and I’m just like, “It’s gonna be good, and I don’t need it to be good right now, because I’ll fix it. So check this lyrical prose, b*****.” So if I don’t like how a sentence flows, I’ll change it mid-scene. But I don’t obsess over it. That way lies madness.

Between this round and the next, I sit for about 2-3 weeks and do other things. Otherwise, I run into problems. Waiting is a good idea, mah peeps.

Don’t Be a Passive Pansy (Check Yourself): I print out my manuscript and go through my entire manuscript with 4 colored pens, looking for passive voice, filter words, basic typos, and any copy-edit mistakes because I’m always gonna stab those to death when I find them, to prevent them from breeding and spreading across my manuscript like demon bunnies. I also go through looking for repetitive information/dialogue tags/actions.

More waiting, my lovelies. 2-3 weeks is a good time period, especially if you’re working on another project or reading a lot of different books.

Don’t Be Racist/Ableist/Sexist/A Douche: after making all my changes from the previous round, I reprint my manuscript and take new pen colors to it, looking for any kind of anything that could be racist, sexist, anti-lgbt+ in any way, or that just doesn’t conform to the religious, racial, cultural, or queer identities of my characters (this usually snags almost all characterization contradictions, so it’s doubly useful). Usually this is only a very small thing. 

For example, in Eidolon there’s a moment where Janine is thinking about a kiss, and it’s not clear that this kiss is supposed to be a chaste and sweet one instead of a passionate teeth-tongues-and-drool kiss, so I underlined that sentence and rewrote it to make it clear that Janine’s not into those kinds of kisses, because she’s ace. Or like, also in Eidolon, I did a Google search on ways to describe a deaf person’s voice and vocal patterns without being offensive, because I’d left a footnote-mark in a certain color of pen where said mentions needed to appear when describing Princess Madeline’s voice.

And yet more waiting. Don’t worry, this keeps you from wanting to chuck your manuscript out the wind because you’re just so dang tired of looking at it.

Taste the Freaking Rainbow Round: the final round of editing before chucking it over to a crit-partner, with a third round of printing (so I’ve used up 2 reams of paper at this point). Basically I’m double-checking for all the things you were looking for before, and also slashing through any excessively overwritten or purple prose, or any prose that due to situation may sound good but ends up being confusing. This is also my last chance to triple-check for repetition, my ultimate foe.

And then I give it over to someone else.

I Was Asked If I'd Ever Written an Ace Character...

Usually I write high fantasy, so the word “ace” doesn’t really exist in those situations. However, my ace characters make it very clear that they are in fact ace. The one urban fantasy I wrote with an ace character and then “The Ride,” which is set in the future, were written at a time when I didn’t know there was a word for being ace so they don’t use it, but the urban fantasy - Glass - is being overhauled, albeit slowly, so the word is going to be used in the book.

How Many Fat Characters Do I Plan to Write? (And Why Did Someone Ask Me This?)

Quite a few. Janine is my current girl because I’m still working on Eidolon and she’s my MC. Juliet from House of Gears is built like Raven Symone and I’m going to hop back to HoG at some point in the future (it needs serious editing). My female lead in my unnamed VR book - I seriously need a name - is fat. So is my girl in Hit the Lights and my main girl in Frost & Fire. So is my girl in Empress of Ice & Oceans. That’s just a few off the top of my head. I’m sick today so I’m not firing on all cylinders; I apologize. :)

PS - why is this a question???

Someone Asked Why Do I Write Mixed Characters?

Because I’m mixed, first of all. Second, there aren’t as many mixed characters in writing where that mixed-race aspect of themselves is acknowledged except when it’s part of an issue book or contemporary fiction, neither of which I read much of. Third, because as a kid people told me I couldn’t do things because I was too white, too black, blah blah blah, and I couldn’t point to anyone who fit that description who’d really done anything so that I could say, “But they did.” I don’t want that to happen to other children.

How Long Does It Take to Edit a Book? Part 2

Depends on the book and how much work it needs. I often edit as I write (don’t do this; it works for me because I don’t get hung up trying to find the abso-perfect words, and I don’t get discouraged with putting out mediocre stuff on my first or second or third draft, but a lot of people do, so do not edit as you go unless you’re confident it won’t be a problem). Because I do this, the level of help a manuscript needs will often depend on what sort of state I was in when I wrote it. 

House of Gears needed a lot of work because I was so on fire to push it out, I wrote it in 18 days. That was (at the time) 135,000 words in 18 days. Which meant lots of typos. And other things. Passive voice, filter words. Some of this stuff I didn’t even know to look for. Eidolon needed work because it was written for NaNoWriMo but it didn’t need as much work as Gears because I took more time with it. It really just depends on what needs to be done. And also of course, what non-writing-related demands there are on my time.

Empress of Ice and Oceans Mythology Influences

It’s actually only 1/3 in Africa. 1/3 of it is in a country modeled after Yoruba, 1/3 is in a country modeled after Russia, and 1/3 is in a country modeled after Persia. Because the male and female leads have to do a lot of traveling.

But! So my male lead is essentially Koschei the Deathless, but instead of being his love, Marya Morevna is his enemy. I’m combining the story of Koschei with the story of “The Firebird” and several others. My female lead is a water-witch from this kingdom called Ilfe.

The “Hades & Persephone” thing is more a winter vs summer deal. My male lead, Katschei, is from the country of Zima, where it’s always cold as frack and snowing and awful. Thing Siberia. Ayao, my female lead - her people call it the Winter Kingdom and refer to Katschei as the Ice King and the Winter Jackal (they also call him Nunda, Eater of People).

Ayao is from Ilfe, which is islands and jungle and some desert, and it’s usually pretty warm there (summers in Zima are as cold as winters in Ilfe).

So we have essentially a summertime princess being forced to go live in the (in her mind, anyway) coldest, bleakest, darkest place imaginable when she’s used to sunshine and warmth and crashing ocean waves and jungles. Now she’s got ice and snow and dry wind and 30 whole days when the sun isn’t coming up. Luckily she’s allowed to bring some handmaidens and Katschei’s “cousin” Vasalisa is a good friend of hers, so she’s not entirely alone.

How Long Does It Take to Edit a Book? Part 1

Depends on what I need to do, what the problems are, and what it’s like at work, honestly. If there’s low call-volume, I have more time to work between calls. Also, if I have a lot of passive voice (which I do sometimes), that involves a lot of reordering my sentences or sometimes my entire paragraphs to get rid of it. I tend to have repetitive info in each chapter - a holdover from writing fanfiction that only updates every few weeks - so when editing w/ a pen, I have to cross all that out and then delete it later from my docs. 

Like, I don’t edit out of a doc. I edit off a hard-copy of a document, so a big stack of about 400 pages. I’ll go through with colored pens and underline, circle, make notes, cross stuff out. And then I go back to my manuscript doc on my computer, make all those corrections - usually rearranging masses of sentences and possibly adding new scenes, scrapping old ones, enhancing some that are already there, reassigning actions and dialogue between my characters, etc. 

Then I print out another 400 pages, hole-punch them again, stick them in a binder again, sit on it for a few weeks, and then come back to it to edit it all over again. Rinse and repeat until the number of the issues I’ve found have dwindled down to “oh, I just went 30 pages without making any notes, awesome.” Which can take up to 5 or 6, sometimes even 7 printings. Especially because once I get to printing #3 or #4, I’m looking for particular things I notice that keep slipping by me - mostly passive voice, overwriting, and repetition. Those 3 things tend to be my downfall until I get to like, draft 8.

Luckily my mom buys my paper. :D

All the Fairy Tale Retellings? (People Have Been Asking)

Almost all of my original novels have some fairy tale or classic lit element in them somewhere, but often transmuted to the point that most people might not even notice. A good example is House of Gears. It’s a retelling of Cinderella, but you wouldn’t know by reading it right off the bat. Reading it, you might not realize it until the pumpkin coach near the end, because for the most part the book is about Cinderella rescuing her stepsister and the ball happens to be a part of the plan to get that done. But yes, most of my books are retellings of some kind in some way.

Elevator Pitches: Round One

Eidolon: Batman meets Edgar Allan Poe

Empress of Ice&Oceans: Hades & Persephone meets Koschei the Deathless


Frost & Fire: Cruel Intentions meets Harry Potter

Glass: Alice in Wonderland meets The Craft


Hit the Lights: Rainbow Brite meets 1984


I Hear the Bones Singing: Criminal Minds meets the Brothers Grimm


Night-Dreamed Roads: Mad Max: Fury Road meets the Pixie Hollow movies


Samedi: Princess & the Frog meets The Night Circus


Sayuri: Star Trek meets Pacific Rim


VR Book: The Matrix meets Young Justice

Defining Elevator Pitch

An elevator pitch is basically your ability to pitch a book in 1 or 2 lines. So…for example, let’s take a look at some classics most people know.

Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire: Four wizards compete in a three-wizard tournament. Scandal! (I borrowed that from @polandbananas20).

The Hobbit: middle-aged introvert dragged along by dwarves who want to slay a dragon and get their kingdom back.

Throne of Glass: Game of Thrones meets The Hunger Games with really pretty dresses.

Delirium: Romeo & Juliet in a dystopian world where love is considered to be a mental illness.

Great (by Sara J. Benincasa): an adaptation of The Great Gatsby in modern day except with lesbians.

The Selection: The Bachelor, royal edition, with mild civil war (also borrowed/paraphrased from @polandbananas20)

So like, if I wanted to do elevator pitches for some of my books, I might write them something like this:

Eidolon: Edgar Allan Poe meets Batman when Jack the Ripper stalks a neo-Victorian kingdom of half-human magicians.

The Silver Princess: royal Elf twins fall in love with a young doctor while their nations teeter on the brink of civil war.

Frost & Fire: a vindictive brother and sister try to ruin the lives of their fellow students at magic school.

Make sense?

How I Came Up With the Plot of My First Novel

I started a book in 10th grade that’s sort of like, “Okay, what if Odysseus got stuck on his way home from a war but not because he was a cheating douche bag? And what if his son tried to rescue him and actually pulled it off? Also what if his son was actually a daughter? Also girls are fab, so make it two daughters. Also we’ll make everybody werewolves.”

…yeah. That was a thing I did. It was called Gemini Moon and the girls were the daughters of one of the 13 werewolf gods, who was stuck in similar fashion to Odysseus and so his mate, their mom, was battling for the throne because she’s a queen (so not because of werewolf pack stuff, but sheer politics) and so they were like, “Our dad is a literal god? Let’s go get him. ‘Cause we’re only 13 and stuff.”

Do You Like Solarpunk and Eggs?

This thing called solarpunk? I need it in my life! OMG! So much awesome!

It's poisoning my brain already. I can see beautiful houses, awesome clothes, stained glass (I love stained glass), awesome things, so many awesome things, omg I'm gonna die!

Solarpunk has just laid a plot-bunny egg in my brain. It will probably hatch in the next few weeks if I just let it sit.

NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo is DEATH!

Okay, no it's not. But it was HARD, man! And as a Latter-Day Saint, I couldn't write on Sundays (oh, the humanity!), and I don't have time on Saturdays because those are my editing days with my critique partner. This eliminates 10 days (count them! TEN!) out of the 30 I had for NaNoWriMo.

And yet...I still managed to make it to 52,000 words! WOOT WOOT! Yeah!

Seriously, everybody, I encourage anyone who needs motivation to do NaNoWriMo. I work 40 hours a week, and November is one of those accursed holiday months, but I still managed to make my goal and stay motivated without getting discouraged. Except for the time when my husband deleted 2000 words off my document by accident. Then I broke down into hysterical sobbing for a good 20 minutes because it was 4 AM.

But aside from that, it was actually pretty awesome. Of course I had like, zero time for anything else (including my Booktube subscriptions - cue sad panda) but I definitely intend to do it against next year.

Anyway, it's December now, which makes it NaDeFiMo - National December Finishing Month! Because I've only ever written a 50,000 word manuscript once, and it was my first book, and I was 10. So yeah. I've got at least another 45,000 words to go. Wish me luck!

Laters!

Projects in the Works

Now the point of this page is to help me keep my projects straight. They come in 4 categories: Currently Working On, ON Back-Burner, Cloud of Nebulous Ideas, and I'll Get to It One Day. So here they are.

CURRENTLY WORKING ON

BLADES OF FIRE & ICE - Mirabehn and her stepbrother Yaksha plot to ruin Lalita, a fellow student at their elite sorcery academy, when Mirabehn learns Lalita's family might be the reason her late mother's reputation as a sorceress was ruined and Mirabehn was passed over for a prestigious magic class. Complications arise when Yaksha becomes fond of Lalita and begins falling in love with Lalita's sister. Dangerous Liaisons meets Mean Girls, with magic and murder, in a high fantasy world inspired by Hindu mythology and Indian history.

NIGHT-DREAMED ROADS (TO THE CITY OF SLEEP) - When their magic teacher falls ill, a group of acolyte witches must journey to a ruined city to save their teacher's foster son as a test to prove they're ready to become full-fledged witches. Genderbent "Sleeping Beauty" in a solarpunk, post-post-apocalyptic world 170 years in the future starring the fairies.



ON THE BACK-BURNE

KATSCHEI - Ayao should have been the princess of the Summer Kingdom, but she was born with witch's magic. Bargained off as the bride to the cruel, immortal tsar of the Winterlands, she will do whatever it takes to end the centuries-long war between their countries. But there is more to Tsar Katschei than Ayao realizes, and the dark forces behind the war won't be stopped by political maneuvers. It will take all of Ayao's skill as a mati wata - a water-witch favored by the magical orishas of the Summer Kingdom - to end the war once and for all. Beauty and the Beast set against a high-fantasy world inspired by Slavic fairytales and Santerian mythology.
 
LACEY AND TIM - Lacey and her twin brother Tim don't mind that their house is full of dead bodies or that they're stuck wearing all black even when they're not in mourning or that their nanny's been undead for a solid decade. They like living in a mortuary and having a dead witch for a babysitter means outtings are never boring affairs. And their parents trust them with the family secret: the mortuary is just a front, a means of providing aid to the otherworldly beings known as midnight immortals that frequent NAN (the Nocturnal Alliance Network) for help quietly faking their deaths and relocating to different parts of the world under new names with new lives without normal humans finding out. One day a midnight immortal that comes to their parents for help is murdered in the mortuary and a strange golden orb is stolen from his pocket. Unable to go to the police, their parents realize someone has uncovered their connection to the Alliance. Then they disappear, too, leaving Tim and Lacey on their own to figure out where they've gone, who killed the immortal, what is so special about the orb, and what to do next -- before they become the next victims. A middle-grade gaslamp fantasy mystery set in city reminiscent of Victorian Hong Kong. 

LADY OF HYAKKI YAKO - American thread-witch and fashion designer Grant Ishida must go to the daimyo of the local yokai clan when his brother is kidnapped by a man-eating spider demon. The daimyo sends Ayame, a yokai kunoichi, to escort Grant through an otherworldly dimension reminiscent of feudal Japan, but Ayame has secrets of her own. The fairytale of "The Snow Queen" set in a magical, feudal Japan populated by Japanese myths and legends.


SAMEDI - An immortal Haitian death-prince must track his wayward brother to America to stop him from combining ghede-magic with Frankenstein's science to create unkillable monsters. In order to succede, he'll need the help of a young aerialist from a strange circus with ties to the late Dr. Frankenstein and his monster. A loose retelling of Hades and Persephone.
 
SAYURI - Hostile aliens attack a starship captain fresh out of the academy. In order to escape, she risks going through a temporal-spatial rift and crashlands on modern-day Earth with her living ship. Chased across space and through time by the aliens, Sayuri and Boreal - an extraterrestrial, sentient starship - have to team up with Eric, a modern guy who happened to be in the wrong place at the right time, in order to discover the aliens plan before they rewrite history.

STONESPEAKER - Avatars of the Chinese Zodiac and masters of Shaolin alchemy, Lia and her brother Demetrius have to decide who to trust when they find out the government and their parents are lying to them. In a near-future world where magic is a common ability and Chinese demons prowl the back alleys of every city, all Lia knows for sure is that the Zodiac have a mission. Now if only she and her brother knew what that was.

TEMPUS PSYCHE - In an alternate world where witches live alongside normal humans and people are born with soul-clocks that count down to the moment you meet your "true love," a blind witch communicates with the deaf boy she loves via sleepwritten letters and enchanted music while trying to protect him from the murderous stalker who's killed off her last six potential soulmates.


TIGRESS SHARK - Ren wakes up with no memory and on the run from the Ningyo Empress's guards in this Southeast-Asian high fantasy steampunk adventure that combines "The Little Mermaid" and "Snow White." Teaming up with the exiled crown princess-turned-smuggler Captain Tigress and her crew of ghost-pirates, Ren must uncover the secrets locked inside his memories in order to depose the Empress and give the princess back her throne.

CLOUD OF NEBULOUS IDEAS

HOLIDAY - sort of a Nightmare Before Christmas meets The Neverending Story with a dash of Rise of the Guardians.

THE GIRL FROM DUNWICH - a contemporary dark fantasy inspired by HP Lovecraft.

I'LL GET TO IT ONE DAY

WHERE THE HEART IS - I'm actually almost done with this, I just have been so wrapped up in YA that I don't have time for adult romance anymore. BUT! An embittered lawyer learns his late sister had a child, but her legal guardian - a woman with some very good reasons to hate his family - refuses to give the child up. A contemporary retelling of Rapunzel.

Revision: The Waiting Game (dun-dun-DUNN!)

I used to think that the advice about "finish your manuscript and then sit on it for a month" was silly. Why would I do that? I was good enough, fast enough, I could zip through my revisions right after I finished my rough draft!

I was wrong. So, so terribly wrong.

See, here's my typical process:

1) I come up with an idea

2) I figure out where I want to start

3) I figure out where I want to end

4) I write a mock-query letter to give me some idea of what goes in the middle

5) Then I break it down into a very basic outline of the main events that need to happen

6) Then I start writing

Now, if I'm having trouble connecting my super huge plot-dots (I like that phrase, hee), then I'll go back and do a chap-by-chap outline to help me get to where I need to be. So then I write. And unlike most authors who give the internet interviews I read, I don't just sit down, write it out, and edit later. I have to edit as I go or else I lose my mind. Too many times with my fanfics have I had to scrap whole chapters because there was a major issue that was bugging me but I couldn't figure out at the beginning and I didn't go back and fix it, and so my whole chapter had a lousy foundation and then it crumbled and fell on my head. Let me tell you: ow.

So I write and revise as I go. In fact, every time I sit down to write some more, I skim over the last chapter or two and make any changes I feel are necessary (maybe I forgot a bit of foreshadowing, maybe I found a typo, maybe I mixed up a name, whatever). And then I finish my manuscript. This has seen me through 20 (almost 22) manuscripts, so I'm not worried about this part of my process not working.

(Memo: from what I've seen, they recommend not worrying about revision until you've done your first draft because a lot of aspiring writers look at what they've written and then get hung up on revising but never finish writing their piece. History shows I needn't worry about that little pitfall.)

But here's what happened. In February, I started a novel called HOUSE OF GEARS (which was and is awesome, by the way). And I finished it, and went back and had it beta'd by my critique partner and did my revisions, all in about a month. And then I queried it and actually got a partial request from the amazing Hannah Bowman and a full request from the also-amazing Lana Popovic.

Go me, right? Yeah, just one problem - GEARS wasn't ready. It was really good, even with only a month's work into it, but it wasn't good enough. So I despaired and then decided I would write a new novel and take off with it. Woot, woot!

Yeah, I did that. I have a habit of starting like 6 novels before narrowing my focus to the 1 or 2 that set me on fire, and then going back to the other ones after I've finished the first 2 (usually some plot changes inspired by distance from the project make the less-than-fiery ones burn me up to write them at this point). And I started some really great pieces that I'm going to go back to later. I also got a job, yay me! But eventually I thought, "I really miss the world of GEARS."

See, here's the thing about that - you need to write what you love, and I was IN LOVE with that book. It is, in my opinion, the best thing I have ever written (and finished). Of course, it's also my latest project, and each novel you write should get better, so there's that. But I was so depressed because I knew that GEARS was good enough to publish...wasn't it?

NO! No it wasn't. And this is where time and distance come in! Because I pulled it out a couple months later and I realized it needed some polish. It was good, don't get me wrong - but it wasn't great. My plot was awesome. It needed to be stellar. My prose was cool. It needed to be fantastic. And I needed to rein in my imagination a bit (in the words of one amazing agent who gave me some great advice on the manuscript) because while imagination is great, you need to give other people a roadmap into your head, too.

So I went back and I revised and I revised. And then I gave GEARS to my beta group (a team of mine I assembled at work consisting of about 7 people) and they checked it out. And they're not done yet. But when they are, and I revise based on what they say and what I think after not looking at GEARS for the month that they have it, only THEN will I query again. Because you really do need that time and distance to be more objective about your work.

Listen to agents, editors, and published writers. They really do know what they're talking about. And don't rush! I mean, I have to rush on my rough drafts because if I don't I can't sleep, but NEVER rush on revisions. You're only hurting yourself and your awesome project.

Laters!