Wugh! Wealthgiver! My plan was to read through the string of scenes I’d made in the alpha and beta drafts of this book and add what needed adding. Putting the meat around the bones and the heart, you might say. It was a new kind of editing for me – adding rather than subtracting to make things better.
Over the course of two and a half months, I evolved a Process:
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1) Blank page – grab the image that comes
2) crack open old scene and make outline
3) put new stuff where it belongs in outline
4) read through and integrate
5) add + sign and move these instructions to next scene
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With that text in hand, I ground down through my manuscript, growing new images, breaking and re-setting plot elements, and generally making sure that all the pieces pulled against each other. The result isn’t pretty, but it moves.
Wealthgiver
Complete muscles (gamma draft) finished at 73,706 words
Begun (writing) at 9:09pm on Thursday, April 8th 2021 in the Parents’ Keep of Scenic Castle Cylon.
First line: “Kori Chthamali was 16 when she realized that the myth of Persephone was about her.”
Finished at 3:40pm on Wednesday, June 30th 2021, in the Grandparents’ Chamber of the Balkan Tower of Matriarchy.
Last line: “His laughter sped across the valley and echoed back, deeper.”
Finally, Wealthgiver is ready for beta-readers. Send me a message if you’re interested.
Now I’m going to take a break and wait for Interchange to come out. Happy summer, everyone.