Revise, Rewrite, and Reinvigorate: Evolving My Work

I feel like I have been pretty candid about my writing processes over the past few years through these blog posts. Whether it has been editing, cover design, or querying, I have tried to document the process. These past few weeks, I have been in a new and different era of my writing journey: rewriting an entire completed story.

Making That Change 

Though I have taken some time off from blogging, this has freed up some time for perhaps the most time-consuming endeavor I have done in my writing career. Over the past few weeks, I have been rewriting the manuscript I queried at the beginning of this year. This comes after tirelessly querying agents for months, only to get ghosted or receive a boilerplate letter of rejection. Clearly, something wasn’t right and needed to change.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

Fortunately, I met a woman at work who was also preparing for the querying process around the same time that I was considering revising my story, and we exchanged manuscripts in early spring. Together, we provided new insights, a fresh perspective, and a better approach to querying agents. I am so grateful for how critical she was of my work (I certainly needed it!) and this kicked off the beginning of my story overhaul. 

I have changed everything from character motivations to adding an additional 13K words to my word count, and ultimately, I think the story is shaping up to be a more dense and interesting piece of work. I am grateful that I’ve had the time to review what I wrote because, as I distanced myself from that first version of my manuscript, I realized how half-baked it was. 

What I’m Left With Now 

Ultimately, the world I created remains intact, as well as the faith systems I developed, though they now have a more central positioning in the story. I think almost all facets of the story have been at least tweaked throughout these rewrites to evolve and flesh out what was already there. A few aspects were changed entirely, but what was altered has certainly been changed everything for the better!

Overall, choosing to redo most of my story has been very beneficial, even if it was extremely time-consuming. And the process isn’t finished yet. Hopefully, if all goes according to schedule, I will be querying this new and improved manuscript in September so… Stay tuned!