Recounting My Writing Journey: Chapter 8, Part 1/3

Bound

Okay, folks. This will be a long one, as I learned a ridiculous amount of things in my time writing, editing, publishing and marketing my new release, Bound. Because there is so much for me to write about, I'm going to split it up into (fairly) manageable chunks, and I'll try to squish the last year and six month's worth of learning into a few blog posts. Today, I'd like to start at the beginning: The crafting process.

Writing
For this book, there were a handful of things I learned how to streamline for my writing process. First, I started writing with a timer. I know this technique isn't for everyone, but the combination of writing with a timer and logging my word count every day made me ridiculously productive.

​Writing with a timer also helped me understand my process a bit better (I now know I tap out at about 45 minutes, but that I can come back to it after about a 15 minute break). It also helped me avoid writer's block and keep the flow going during my drafting process. I think this strategy also helped minimize the amount of notes I needed to leave myself so that I could go back and fill things in later. Yes, I still had a handful of these, but in comparison to the other books I've published, these notes were few and far between.

In my drafting stages, I also set a weekly goal of 10,000 words, which I often exceeded. Each day when I was finished writing, I'd check to see how many words I'd written and put it into a little spreadsheet to track my progress. Doing so kept me highly motivated to reach my goal, because my little pie chart told me how much I still needed in order to "succeed" for the week. 

The last thing I did with this book that I haven't necessarily done with the others was setting a goal to write something every day. In the past, I've written often, but I would frequently go at least a few days (sometimes a few weeks) without writing anything, and I always found it was more difficult to come back to the story after such a break. For this book, after reading Morgan Gist Macdonald's "Start Writing Your Book Today," I told myself, "You can do this. Just write something. Ten words is better than nothing." And I did write nearly every day. Once I got my kiddo to bed, I'd always take 30 minutes to an hour and just put words on the page. Now, Friday nights are sacred in my household, so I made a habit of scheduling little to no writing on those days. Still, the consistency and the mindset of "Just do something" helped me finish both my rough draft and my developmental rewrite in weeks instead of months.

Re-Writing
I typically do my own developmental editing after some initial feedback from people in my life who know my writing and where my biggest downfalls are. Why? Because editors are so expensive, and it can be difficult in a world so saturated with scammers to know who's legitimate and who will give you the feedback you pay for. But! For this book, an author I follow on Instagram posted their editing availability, and I thought, "You know what? Let's try it." Here are some things I learned from this process:

1. My developmental editor did much the same thing I always do with my books, but she had some amazing insight and questions that I hadn't thought about. She made me really rethink and deepen the world building at the beginning of the book, and she questioned my character motivation throughout, which allowed me to really strengthen the story 
2. My editor was super professional throughout the entire process, and just a joy to work with. Thank you, @djharringtonwriter!
3. Hiring an editor allowed me to rethink my re-writing process a bit. I used to just start at the beginning and work my way through, adding, cutting, or changing things as I went. And I still did that with this book, but now I had my editor's feedback to read through beforehand and consider the best ways to make those changes.

 
Editing
Aside from the changes made to my developmental editing process, not a whole lot changed in my editing processes. I edited like this:

Once the first draft was written, I did a quick edit to address the notes I'd made and did a rewrite of the first chapter. Then I sent it out to my developmental editor. When I got that feedback, I did a complete rewrite of the story. After that, I did another quick edit to catch glaring mistakes before sending it out to beta readers. 

I compiled data a bit more differently this time with my beta readers, keeping all answers to their questions in a spreadsheet that I could easily access and find what I needed for marketing purposes. Then I implemented their suggestions. I got AMAZING beta reader feedback for this one, and thanks to my beta readers, I was able to even further strengthen the story. 

After my beta read implementation, I did another quick edit, then formatted the book. I'll talk about the formatting process a bit more in my next post. Then I submitted the book and ordered a proof copy, which I used to do my final proofreading and line editing. Once those changes were implemented, the book was good to go!

Character Development and World Building
I had a handful of developmental documents running while in the process of drafting and editing this book. 

I had a character development document to keep track of my main characters, their backstories, their interest, and their fears. 

I had a world building document where I kept track of all of my locations and their cultures, and I paired this with a map that I designed and drew that helped me keep my locations, distances, and times straight as my characters traveled. 

I had a lore document to keep track of the history of the continent my characters are from, as well as to keep track of the political systems of that continent. I used this document also to keep track of the witch's story and the game I developed for this story: Fates. ​

​I have had an incredible time writing and producing this book, and in today’s post I’ve only scratched the surface. Check back next weekend for more recounting of my writing journey. 
 
People I have to thank for their support in the writing and editing process for this book:
Brandon Evans
Danielle Harrington
Imogen Escotto
Gilbert James
Zulema Lockhart
Morgan Gist Macdonald