Revision, Writing, and Rewriting

I’m in the process of revising my first novel, Prince of Herongarde. I’ve already written a complete first draft, and then gone through and revised it, at which point, I found a bunch of beta-readers and sent it out.

Now I’m looking at it again, trying to incorporate what my readers suggested and fixing things up because I’ve learned I have some bad writing habits. For example, I suffer from ‘white room’ writing, in which there is absolutely no description of the environment in which the characters are acting. I also am guilty of ‘telling’ and not ‘showing.’

The end result is that now, on this new revision, I’m actually fully rewriting the book. Some things are the same, but I’m adding description and omitting any telling that I find, replacing it with showing.

I would have thought that rewriting would go a little faster than writing the first draft. I was wrong. I’m scrutinizing every sentence, adding paragraphs, omitting chapters. I’m spending more time ensuring that the crucial topics are addressed in each chapter, and that characters are sufficiently described. (And crap, I just realized that I’ve managed to miss some of this already, and I’m only five chapters in. I’ll be going back to that today at the airport, I’m sure.)

It’s taking a lot longer than I expected. Even a little longer than it did to originally write the prose. I might cut and paste whole paragraphs, but then I read them and switch them around and change things. It takes forever.

But it reads better now.

My hope is to get through this whole first book this month. Unfortunately, it’s around 90,000 words, so that might not be possible. But I’ll try. I’d like to send it out to an editor and then off to agents this year.

Maybe. I hope.