Update on Works in Progress

Another National Novel Writing Month is in the books - I hope all of you who undertook it achieved at least some writing progress.

My project for this month (plus a few days in December) was to work on two book projects. After I had finished The Rose Ring, my boys wanted me to write an action/adventure story with them. It took over two years of working on it every once in a while, and then it needed to be edited and formatted. This was really their story - I served mostly as a scribe and editor. The story ended up being about 20,000 words. During the past month, I did the final edits, proofread and formatted and gave them each a copy on St. Nicholas' Day as an early Christmas present:

One of them wants to write a sequel. I don't know if that will ever happen, but it was one of those projects that was fun to do and I'm glad that they can have a physical reminder of the experience.

As for my own project, my task was to revise the novel I finished several months ago. I started by reading Revision and Self Editing for Publication: Techniques for Transforming Your First Draft into a Novel that Sells which I found to be very helpful. It covers character development, plot and structure, scenes, dialogue and what to do on each read-through.

I finished my editing earlier this week and have sent the manuscript to three fellow writers to beta-read. I've asked them to have comments back by January 15th, so I will devote the next month to other projects and then, hopefully, return to put the finishing touches on this story. With any kind of luck, book #3 will be published in 2016.









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