Okay, so there are about only twelve hours until the start of Camp NaNoWriMo, the June session. This time I should probably talk a little more about what I am working on for the month, which is basically the editing process of Project Death: Resurrection.
I both enjoy and loathe the editing process, and honestly I think most people probably feel the same way. When just sitting down and writing, it is about figuring out the personalities of the characters, figuring out the over-arching plot, and just making it from "once upon a time" to "the end" (or some variation thereof). But, in editing, the real work begins. Over the years I have discovered that the easiest way for me to edit any of my novels is to wait at least several months after completing it before trying to write.
A great number of authors/editors/agents, etc have also suggested this, getting distance from your work, and I find it to be so very helpful. When I finish a novel and put it aside to work on other things, I allow my mind to basically forget about what I wrote, to no longer be so focused on the characters and the storyline. So, when I pick the novel up again a few months later, it feels as if I am reading something written by something else except...of course...I have the ability to completely criticize and mark all over it.
This is the case with Project Death: Resurrection. The idea originally came to me back in...2005-2006, I believe. I wrote the prologue and the first 2-3 chapters, so something like 5,000 words and then I stopped to work on other stories. It was my senior of high school and I was writing a few different novels. I think it was while on Winter Vacation in 2008-2009 that I opened up the Word document containing Resurrection and got back into it.
I finished writing Resurrection in mid-October 2009, so midway through the first semester of my senior year in undergrad. The first draft came in at 44,698 words, so a few thousand shorter than most of my other novels, especially considering the fact that I had been participating in NaNoWriMo for three years by that time. I may not have been completely pleased with the word count, but I was pleased to have finished the story.
Of course, midway through writing it, I discovered that I had so much more story to tell and that I would at least have to have a second book, if not more. So, the Project Death series was born. After finishing it, I knew I was going to set it aside for a little while, especially seeing that November and NaNo were right around the corner. Still, I did something that to this day I consider to be the scariest test of my writing ever...I printed out a copy of Resurrection and gave it to my mother to read.
A week later she told me that the ending was rather rushed. So, after returning to school in January 2010, I started editing my novel. I tried to edit a chapter a day, and I was successful at that for almost three weeks, and then I slowed down and got distracted by other things at school. I think it was summer 2010 when I actually finished my first editing pass with Resurrection. Not only had I added five chapters to the ending, but I had also added 17,639 words, bringing the total word count up to 62,337.
Since then, I have pushed the novel aside again. I wrote the first couple chapters of the second bookProject Death: Revelation, but other than that, not much has happened. Now, I am determined to fix that. I have pulled Resurrection out again and I am quite focused on editing it and finishing it by June 2012. This is mostly so I can use my coupon from NaNoWriMo on CreateSpace and get my novel published.
In the past couple of months the only major edit I have done was to take the novel from a prologue and 35 chapter to a prologue and 18 chapters, which I think feels a lot better and it still maintains some of the chapter cliff hangers that are rather important. I also managed to get through another round of editing for the prologue and chapter one. I ended up adding 1,956 words to the prologue, and as soon as I get the edited parts of chapter one typed up I will have a better idea of how much I added to that as well. Based on my estimations I should be adding between 30,000 and 36,000 words to Project Death: Resurrection by the time my edits are finished, and that would take the novel up to almost 100,000 words, which is actually the length of a number of YA books on the market nowadays.
Okay, so what follows is the cover I created for Project Death: Resurrection via CreateSpace, and then the back cover blurb. If anyone is reading this, let me know what you think. Thanks.
Tamesis always thought that she knew her destiny and was determined to be the absolute best Resurrector there was.
But, Fate had different plans. On her first heal, Tamesis runs into two mysterious men, and one of them changes everything for her.
Tamesis cannot stop thinking about him and dreaming about him. Then, when the work of the Resurrectors is threatened, the man returns and sets Tamesis on a path that opposes everything she was raised to believe.
Instead of preserving life, Tamesis must accept that something has twisted the beliefs of the Resurrectors. The war between Resurrectors and those who protect the Balance is heating up.
