Muse News #3

It's a milestone day!

Finally after nearly five months of work, the fourth draft of 360 is finally finished!  I say "finished", but of-course even as I prepare the copies for my loyal band of beta-readers, I been noticing things that I want to change.

Not a milestone, but as close as I could get.
[Photo: Jack Gilbert]

Those things will have to wait until the fifth draft. I consider the fourth draft finished. I've made all the changes and refinements that I set out to make when I started this particular draft and fixed all the problems raised by various readers in their feedback from previous drafts, so that's job done for now.

I have to say that - overall - I am very happy with the fourth draft.  The plot is tighter and has better pacing while the text itself has benefited immensely from being changed from the passive voice to the active voice.  It makes total sense that an action story would be told in the active voice.  I don't know why I didn't do that in the first place.

There we go, you live and learn.  I'll know for next time.

With the fourth draft ready, I'll be distributing copies to my beta-readers this week. I can then sit back and wait with baited breath for their comments to come back (actually, I will be quite nervous).

Well, maybe not quite sitting back.  I'm not going to be totally idle.  A writer very rarely has nothing going on in their head.  I have at least three other ideas in various states of readiness waiting to fill the void that the last five months of editing will leave.  Who knows, a completely unexpected idea from left-field may strike me and demand immediate attention.

One thing is for sure: my next novel is going to be much shorter! (Why do I have to make these plots so detailed?).

I'm going to try to give myself this week off from writing...so next week's Muse News may be a little thin, but no doubt the creative pangs will overrule and I'll do some work on one project or another.

There will be there will be something to report, so do checkout how I do in next week's exciting Muse News!