Wow! I am feeling good today. For the first time since I wrote my first draft, I feel like my novel is finished. Getting the story into shape has been a crazy long saga. Here's a summary of the process with time gaps left out:
* Wrote a three part novel
* Felt there was more story to be told so a sequel was written
* Decided to combine both stories leaving me with 250K+ words to work with (way too many!)
* Began the editing process
* Removed Part I of the original to get word count under control (hated this, never felt right)
* Tons more edititing
* Story didn't work without Part I so put it back in
* Word count slowly came down but still wasn't where it needed to be
* Took a break to reflect on the story (what was it really about, what was the goal, etc)
* Decided the sequel was my imagination running away with me so took it out (material is saved, may use at a later time)
* Word count looked much better but...
* Decided to expand on the Christian element (add more when word count is high? eek!)
* Continued editing and removing unnecessary information
* Decided Part III was not needed (felt good about removing it)
* Finished editing. (word count just over 97K! whew!)
So as I said, I'm feeling good right now. I want to do one more read through before handing it over to some betas, and hopefully there won't be many wrinkles to iron out. And if there are, then so be it. I'll make the necessary corrections and get started on the query process. Before that happens, I'm just going to enjoy where I'm at. :)
How awesome! Good for you. I can only hope I get to this point soon. I've been doing the same editing, cutting, etc. over the last two years with my book & it's driving me insane at this point. So glad to see that someone else is ready to add "Finished" to their list. :D
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