Blogging with Kristine Cayne: Time to Celebrate

Blogging with Kristine Cayne: Time to Celebrate - Book 1 is Done!!!

Time to Celebrate - Book 1 is Done!!!

The second weekend of October last year, I attended the Emerald City Writers Conference (ECWC) in Bellevue, WA and filled out a little slip of paper. "So what?" you ask. "So everything," I say. Because this little slip of paper had been handed to me by an unrelenting task master. I'd just committed myself to the Cherry Adair Finish the Damn Book Challenge, pledging to write a single title, full-length novel (at least 100K) by September 20, 2010. OMG!!!

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Draft
After the panic attack subsided, I left the conference inspired. During October, I worked on the plot to my story. Although, I had a basic outline, it still had a lot of holes that still needed to be filled. That lead to research - lots and lots of research.

Nano came along in November. What a Godsend! In 30 days, I wrote 50K words. Granted not all of them were good and what I ended up with was a rough draft, not a work of Literary fiction. On the other hand, I no longer had that dreaded blank page to contend with.

December came and went. I finished the draft with 110K words. I was all fired up for the new year, and firmly believed I could edit, revise and polish this diamond to a brilliant, shiny finish by the end of March. I had a critique group (Thank you ladies!!) and three months to do it. (See my 2010 goals .) That was more than enough time, no? Little did I know...

Revisions
In May, a fellow Eastside RWA member and I decided to become critique partners. Wow! What a needed boost that was. Twice a week, we read each others chapters, provided detailed edits as well as discussed major revisions, characterization, how to increase suspense, and clarify character motivation. (Thank you Dana!!)

June came along and I was only halfway through the revisions. That's when I realized that I needed to rewrite the second half of the book. The plot wasn't bad but it wasn't delivering the punch that I wanted. June, July and August passed in a flurry of writing, revising and editing.

Final (?) Version
September 20 - I put all my chapter files together; verified that I'd incorporated all my critique partner and critique group comments; double checked character name spelling (wouldn't want to get that wrong!), and a million other small details. And almost died when I saw the total word count - 160K words!! My God, I'd written an epic.

Next Steps
This year, the ECWC conference is the first week of October. I've got appointments with four editors/agents. So, between now and then, I have to write and polish a synopsis of my book and prepare an awesome pitch. Yikes! I've never done either.

People tell me that it takes many months to hear back from agents and editors, if you hear anything at all, so in October, I'll take the time to work with Beta readers and try to trim any fat out of my book. I'd like to get it to at least under 150K words.

And then in November? It's NaNoWriMo time again! I'll be working on Book 2. Thanks to my wonderful plotting partners (Thank you CherryPlotters!!), I already have a plot for this book. It still has some holes which I'll fill in during October. I'm also doing research on a wide array of topics that I'll need when I start writing.

So, with the help of my friends in the writing community, I met my goal to finish Book 1 by the end of September 2010. I didn't meet the goals I'd set out for myself at the beginning of the year but I still feel good about what I did manage to achieve. You have to have gone through the process of writing a book at once to know what it really entails. And with any luck, I'll be able to refine that process and get Book 2 done in less than a year