Edits, Edits, and More Edits.

One down, six to go!

I’ve finished the first edit of my manuscript as of Sunday, and it’s a fantastic feeling! Going through a manuscript with fresh eyes is important, especially for finding slow points, or areas that need more clarity. I’ve ended up with about eight pages of notes, and plenty to do.

One thing that I enjoyed about this edit was revisiting a few sections that I had written quite a while back, and seeing how far I’ve come in the past year. One of the sections was actually the first thing I wrote about the Empire ever! It was a great experience, and now I can get back to smoothing out the rough edges of my text.

In the meantime, I’ve also done some plot work for the third book in this series – primarily because I need to make sure I’m not giving too much away before everything comes together at the end. The challenge with writing complex plots is making sure they don’t confuse people, whilst still being compelling. That’s the balance I’m working on.

My last thought: I’ve heard it said that until you finish a book, you can’t say what it’s truly about. This has been true of both my novels so far – you can’t force a narrative to go somewhere unnatural. I’ll talk more about themes at a later date, but for now it’s back on the editing wagon.