Last summer, Jolene and I were editing our first novel Harrowed together. This year, we're working on the first book in our new Orchard Pointe series, which we want to have out in the next couple on months. Which means it's go time--no messing around.
This past week was our fist full week of edits on OP, and we entered this round with two major goals--to get into the weird stuff quickly, and to make sure we had plenty of atmosphere. As I write this post on Sunday night, we have ten chapters under our belt in this first week, and for me, two major changes to the first draft.
To ramp up the action in the first few chapters, I write an entirely new scene for our main character. I think it fits really well into what we already had, and with Jolene's magical ability to make everything better, I know the new scene will fit seamlessly by the time we're done.
We also had to rewrite a good portion of one of the early chapters, and thus the Jenga match begins. There are several things that are now broken because of this early change, and they'll need to be fixed as we move into the next handful of chapter. Nothing major, but stuff that needs to be fixed, nonetheless.
I am a systems nerd--I like to see how things fit together, take them apart, and put them back in a way that works even better. So the Jenga aspect of edits is something that I actually enjoy. That's not to say I take it lightly--every decision to change something needs to be very thoughtfully made. but when it makes the story better, I don't mind having to fix some broken elements, and Jolene is the same way.So, as we head into week two of major edits, we'll be fixing the things we broke in week one, while still keeping our overall goals in mind for the chapters ahead. Stay tuned!
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