Novel Update & Why It Took So Long to Finish

My last novel update post was in 2016 when I was taking my first ever writing class, and learning a lot of information that inspired me to make a whole lot of changes to my manuscript.

So what's been going on with my manuscript since then? First, here's a little recap on my novel writing journey.


I started in 2009, but life got really crazy busy in 2010, and I didn't try again until 2012. That's the year, I would say I officially began my novel. I decided with purpose and intention that I was finally going to do it. I didn't "finish" until July 2014. I let my mom read the printed manuscript, then got to work revising. To this day, she's still the only person in my life I've allowed to read it, and so much has changed since then that it's practically a new book.

It took me two years to write, but I was far from being done.

Revisions take time, and some of that time includes tucking it away in a drawer and not looking at it for a while. After I finished it again in July 2015, I knew it was time to let someone else take a look. It had be a totally unbiased opinionated stranger because I was too afraid to tell anyone I know I'd written a book, let alone allow them to read it. That summer I paid a beta reader to crush my dreams. She ripped my manuscript to shreds chapter by chapter. It was pretty bad. Reading such harsh feedback on something I put so much of myself into was devastating, but deep down I was grateful.  I needed to know the truth, and sometimes the truth hurts.  A lot. I cried. I almost quit.  Well that's it then. I told myself. I guess I can't do this after all. I couldn't even think about it for a few weeks, but something inside me refused to give up. I had to see this through. I did additional revisions, and again thought I was done by end year 2015, but I had no idea.
 
I took that super awesome novel writing class at the local community college Spring 2016 which inspired me to do some re-working of story lines which required additional writing. I even came up with a title I loved. With that, I finished again in September 2016.

I thought I was slicing and dicing during the last two round of edits, but this is the part of the revision process when I cut a whole lot of dead weight. I killed so many darlings. For a minute, I worried there would be nothing left! It was my last go at polishing and tightening it up as much as possible and I finished again in March 2017.  If you lost count that's four rounds of revisions over the course of three years during which time my word count went from over 100,000 to under 90,000. This time, when I said I was finished I meant finished. Finally, I felt fully satisfied with what I'd done. So satisfied, that if anyone had dared told me to change a thing, I might have had to tell him or her to take a flying leap off a bridge. I revised the hell out of it, and truly felt I'd made it as good as I possibly could.  Now what?

Well, this is the part where I would normally do my yearly novel writing update post, but I didn't do one in 2017. I was conflicted, and then waiting for feedback that never came. Then traveling, then came probably the worst September/October of my life. Then the holidays, and more traveling. I didn't post much at all. My only novel updates last year were from Instagram.

March 2017
I'm down to 88k words, and feeling really good about this last round of edits at the moment but it could be an entirely different story the next time I read through it. Literally! One day I love it and the next day it's the worst piece of crap ever written and it is quite the emotional roller coaster. I've been writing and revising forever! I've enjoyed it so much but I'm ready to be done. 

The revision process is kind of exhausting, but also kind of great. With each round I liked some parts, but got a sinking oh my gosh this sucks feeling in my gut reading other parts, which led to additional changes. When it didn't feel right, I always knew I had to change something even if I didn't know exactly what in that moment. Revision ideas came to me, not only when I was sitting at my computer, but while doing random things. In the shower. Taking a walk. In bed at night. Watching TV. My brain was always in revision mode and I couldn't turn it off. If something came to me, I wrote it down either on paper or on an iPhone note. It might be a sentence. A word, or something that needed shifting, but I had to write it down otherwise I'd forget. I made changes. Eventually the revisionist thoughts died down, and that round of revisions was done. It was extremely helpful for me to look at it with fresh eyes, so I was really good about putting it aside and not looking at it between revisions.

I did not get that sinking feeling in my gut after the last round of edits in March. I did a read through on my iPad cleaning up sentences and cutting out excess words, but other than that I liked what I saw. I always said whenever I truly and fully felt good about my manuscript is when I'd move forward with the next step. The only problem is, that I still didn't know what that next step should be and I was scared to move forward.

I finished revising by April of last year. I didn't look at it after that (nor was I super receptive to changing anything), but it seemed logical to get a second opinion before moving forward. I had offers from blog readers, but was too chicken to share, so I went back to the same beta reader who nearly broke me the year before. Unfortunately, she flaked. I paid her then didn't hear from her until I was in Germany that summer. She apologized for not getting back to me, but wanted to let me know she really liked it and saw big improvements. She never got back to me with the beta read notes she owed me. That was the last I heard from her.

November 2017
Some of you already know this but, I wrote a fiction novel. Some of you have even said you would like to read it! Hopefully you like Women’s Fiction. I finished up the last round of edits in April and still don’t hate it yet so that’s a good sign! I’ve worked so hard on it and I’m at the point where I need to decide on next steps. It’s been a long time coming but I think I might be ready to send my baby into the world.   

Five years later, I was finally ready, and next steps is an entirely different post.

Should I be embarrassed that it took me so long time to finish my novel? I don't know. I guess that's what happens when you have no idea what you're doing. I still don't, but I think there is so much you don't know about your own process, and what works until you get a chance to do it. Sometimes you don't know what you don't know until you realize you don't know it. I wasn't under any kind of hard deadline, and I was a pantser not a plotter. I didn't have an outline or even know exactly where I wanted my story to go when I started. Also, my page count goal was only 15 pages per month. That's roughly 4,000 words. I met my goal but still, it's a pretty slow pace. I worked on it in my spare time, which meant evenings and weekends, which let's get real, meant mostly weekends because after working all day I'm mentally spent. Technically, it took me two years to write my novel, but there were three years of a whole lot of how the hell am I going to fix this? I can't look at this thing anymore, and what now? moments during the revision phase.

I was in no rush. Obviously.