Dremiks Progression

I finished the first draft* over the Christmas holidays. I had a lot of time on my hands and a self-enforced deadline to meet. With the help of my loving, and patient, husband, I managed to slog through the climax and wrap everything up.

But, as the afore-mentioned husband loves to point out, that was just the beginning of the work load. I mailed off copies to four people whose opinions I trust and value. Then I had to wait. I’m not good at waiting. To be more precise, I SUCK at waiting. All of those four people, though, have jobs and families to attend to. I could hardly harass them about being slow when they were editing for free!

The last of the four editors has finally finished. Now I have to fix the plot points that weren’t clear enough, tighten up some dialog, change a name that REALLY irritated one of the editors, and re-write the first chapter.

Again.

*While it might be the first complete draft, this certainly isn’t the first version of this story. I’ve been working on it on-and-off since 1987. Granted, it spent almost 10 of those years in a drawer being ignored, but, still, there’s a lot of writing and re-writing that goes into a work over twenty-five years.

A perfect example is that first chapter. It doesn’t set the hook quite as deeply as I want. The tone and pacing are great (in my opinion), but there’s not enough to snag a reader ( again, in my opinion). So, I’m slicing and dicing and trying not to wince as I do so. The unedited first draft was over 150,000 words. That’s on the high side for space opera. People like descriptions and fleshed out characters, but people (read: potential readers) also don’t have hours to devote to reading a book. The exception to that statement being an epic work like the final Harry Potter novels or George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. However, those books really are the exception and those authors already had well established fan bases before the first word hit an editor’s desk.

So that’s where things stand right now. Later this week I’ll update you on the marketing strategies and the (surprising) headaches of e-publishing.