Writing Check In- April

One of my goals for this year was to write more. My husband had the suggestion of making a monthly feature to talk about my writing and how it’s going. I’ve decided to make this the first Tuesday of the month so you can all look forward to these posts with bated breath and get a little update on where I am.

I had a major breakthrough with a character a few weeks ago. Her motivation was weak and she is (on purpose) quite an annoying character so I needed to give her a great reason to act the way she does and I hadn’t been able to figure it out. It finally came to me in the middle of one of my weekly writing sessions and I immediately started adding it back into the novel. It was almost like starting over each scene she came up and it took a lot of work but I’m almost caught up again to where I was when I had this idea. It feels so good. I ran the idea past my husband and my beta reader and both loved it. I’m so glad!

Once that’s worked in, I’ll continue working through the feedback my friend and beta reader Kristine Kruppa gave me. This will probably take me a few more months since I’m going at it a bit slowly. Once that’s done, I had another beta reader give me some feedback that’s a bit more topical and stylistic than plot. I’ll go over that quickly I expect. I have a book to work through after that, Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass. I read the book that came with a workbook a few years ago and it seems like it’s time to go through the workbook. After that, I’ll send it to two beta readers again and then I think it might be time to query. It also seems too soon, but I know it has to happen at some point!

I have a few other stories started, but no more novel ideas at this point. My second completed manuscript isn’t something I love and I’m not sure I want to go through the extensive editing process with it if I’m not super passionate. Maybe I better start again fresh with another idea. However, that seems too far off to worry about just yet.

Until next time, write on.

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