At the moment I'm ploughing my way through the last book I wrote. I'm doing a major edit and by major I mean major!
As a writer it's very easy to fall in love with your characters. You find yourself getting carried away by their lives and very often the story you intended to tell about them just starts to write itself.
My latest book [Working title: I'm Ella Samuel] was always supposed to be a contemporary romance. In keeping with my back catalogue. Somehow my book went in a slightly different direction and it's very hard to place a book that crosses genres. They don't always work. With the advice of my agent I'm editing the book. Only problem is, once you finished a book, fallen in love with the characters and their story, it's hard to make those changes.
The first thing I had to do was accept that the edit would improve the book. That accepted, the next thing to decide is where to start. What do you cut out, which characters need to go and which plot lines should stay? It's so, so hard. You'd think it would be obvious and easy to edit a book once you've decided it needs it. But it's hard to let go of scenes that you had so much faith in and plots that took a lot of emotion out of you to write.
I'm coming close to the completion of restructuring my book. I know the work isn't finished and that my agent is waiting to read it so the pressure is on. I'll be busy all weekend and for the weeks to come, hoping I can pull this off and end up with a book that my agent is able to sell and that I'm completely happy with!
Wish me luck :)
As a writer it's very easy to fall in love with your characters. You find yourself getting carried away by their lives and very often the story you intended to tell about them just starts to write itself.
My latest book [Working title: I'm Ella Samuel] was always supposed to be a contemporary romance. In keeping with my back catalogue. Somehow my book went in a slightly different direction and it's very hard to place a book that crosses genres. They don't always work. With the advice of my agent I'm editing the book. Only problem is, once you finished a book, fallen in love with the characters and their story, it's hard to make those changes.
The first thing I had to do was accept that the edit would improve the book. That accepted, the next thing to decide is where to start. What do you cut out, which characters need to go and which plot lines should stay? It's so, so hard. You'd think it would be obvious and easy to edit a book once you've decided it needs it. But it's hard to let go of scenes that you had so much faith in and plots that took a lot of emotion out of you to write.
I'm coming close to the completion of restructuring my book. I know the work isn't finished and that my agent is waiting to read it so the pressure is on. I'll be busy all weekend and for the weeks to come, hoping I can pull this off and end up with a book that my agent is able to sell and that I'm completely happy with!
Wish me luck :)
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