Writing Update

Here's my MS. Printed. With Iron Man balking
at the sheer size of it.

So I totally didn't schedule my post for today, and then I woke up late, and that's why you're getting this thing about three hours late.

Anyway, it might be no news to ya'll, but about three weeks ago I finished the 2.5 draft of THE HOLLOW MEN, a.k.a. my pride and glory and that manuscript that I love to hate and hate to love and all that shizz-nit. And I'm absolutely terrified and excited and completely nervous about it.

See, I sent it out to two critique partners (ya'll have heard me talk about Hannah Hunt and Brie Moore probably more times than I could count). And this is the first time anybody will have read the book. To up the stakes, I won a Reader Report from the fabulous Kisa Whipkey (who is also the Editorial Director at REUTS Publications) from a giveaway, and now I'm in tornado-editing mode so I can make it as polished as possible before I send it out.

Obviously, it's gotten frazzling.

But, honestly, I'm not freaking out as much as I could. For one, this is three awesome and amazing people, and probably the only ones I'd trust with my manuscript at the moment. It's not going to be perfect-Hannah and Brie got the dang thing straight off the printing press, practically-and there's no way in hell that I'll have it completely edited by the time I'm sending it out to Kisa Whipkey within the next few days.

Because, well, I have this thing called school. And work. And yeah.

So I probably should be freaking out more, but I'm not. I also recently printed out the entire manuscript (which was quite the adventure, actually), so I have a hard copy to work with as well as electronic versions with edits that Hannah and Brie send my way.

My bit of advice? Print out the manuscript, and quit freaking out when you have 75,000+ words to edit. Printing it out gives you a new perspective, and writing directly on the page will help you see things better. And freaking out helps nobody, anyway, so give yourself a 5 minute hyperventilating break every few hours and you're good.

And that's my update. Because it's a holiday, and I don't have much to say on anything while I think about Russian History homework. I'll have something more substantial for ya'll next week, promise!

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@Rae_Slater talks what's happened with her MS since finishing and offers up a key piece of editing advice (Click to Tweet)