Writing again, Yay!

"I like girls, they like me." -Gym Class Heroes, Cookie Jar

Ok, back from the woods and in front of my computer again, with no loss or gain of life as my boss always orders on these trips. Hazah!

And now I'm settling back into school, and that means it's almost time to start writing again. Yay!

I don't know if I've posted about this before, but I basically put my novel on the shelf for the summer while I was working in publishing and doing my summer research---collecting ideas and working on other projects as I prepare for what will hopefully be its last rewrite.

And now it's almost time for the rewrite to begin! Yay! In celebration of that, I'll share a tip or two on my writing process when it comes to something like this.

1.) I make a big list of ideas and changes I'd like to make to the novel (and, if necessary, the later books in the story arc as well) sorted by book and chapter. I do this because there's no way in hell I'd remember everything if I didn't write it down.

2.) I go through and make any small changes on that list, like switching vocabulary around.

3.) I go through chapter by chapter and make the rest of the changes, editing and fiddling as I go. This is often a circular process, as I tend to make changes in Chapter 12 that must be set up in Chapter 7 and eliminate something I had previously hinted at in Chapter 3, so it takes awhile. I can bang through a few chapters a day if I'm really cruising, but I shoot for one a day.

4.) I go back through and read the book from beginning to end, making sure continuity works and I'm happy with everything.

5.) I sit on the manuscript for awhile, maybe go write a short story or get some neglected schoolwork done.

6.) I print the whole thing off and sit down with a red pen to make changes. Hopefully there are no major ones to be made. If there are, I go back to step 3.

7.) I implement the changes and start sending copies of the novel to all the people I've met recently who are like "Wow, you wrote a novel? Can I read it?" in the hopes of getting at least some useful feedback from one or two of them.

8.) Unless I get serious negative feedback, I start submitting.

Sound like a lot of work? It is. Sound time-consuming? It is. But I love it anyway, because I love the stories I tell and I want them to be as great as they can be.