Let me tell you a fairytale…
Once upon a time—in a land far, far away—a woman got a cool idea for a story. A novel, she thought, gleefully rubbing her hands together. So, with a twinkle in her eye, the new writer sat at her laptop and typed her little heart out, day and night. When her manuscript was fully drafted, all she had left to do was clean up a few typos and grammatical errors. And voilà! Her book was ready for publication and she lived happily ever after. The end.
Yeah, no. Not so much.
Unbeknownst to said writer, there’s a pesky little thing called revision—a tedious, often long process which has become the bane of my existence. Why? Because I’ve been on a roller coaster in Revisionland, working on A Thousand Times for a while now, and I just wanna get off. *le dramatic sigh*
I’ve discovered revision can be challenging even at the best of times, because it can mean changing directions or cutting paragraphs, scenes, subplots, characters, and even chapters. It can be really hard to cut even a single sentence, let alone a character or an entire chapter, after pouring your blood, sweat, and tears into your story.
And the thing of it is, sometimes when you fix one thing, you break something else entirely. A knowledgeable writer-friend sagely told me it’s because if a butterfly flaps its wings in chapter one, it can turn into a tsunami by chapter thirty. He wasn’t kidding. So when that happens, it can result in yet another revision. Lather, rinse, repeat. Ack.
On the upside, I’ve learned it’s a totally normal part of the writing process even experienced writers face, but because of it, A Thousand Times won’t be published until April-ish 2024. That said, Liv and Zak’s story will be more compelling when it’s completed and in the end, it’s what matters the most.