Moving right along

Last night, I finished making the longhand corrections to A Theft of Bones, thus completing Stage 1 of the revision process.  I’ll admit that I was a bit wary of printing out the manuscript and making the corrections by hand, but, in retrospect, I made the right decision.  There’s a real difference between reading something on the page and reading it on a computer screen, and I find that the former is much more conducive to the business of editing and revision.

The downside, of course, is that it does create more work since I now have to go back into Word and type in the changes.  I think of this as Stage 2 of the revision process because I’ll also be revising my revisions, so to speak.  But when it’s over, I should have a tight, clean manuscript that I can ship off to my beta readers with confidence.

Once my beta readers have returned the manuscript to me, I’ll be able to embark on Stage 3, the final stage of the process.  That’s when I go through and make the changes my beta readers have suggested.  I’m going to try very hard to stop revising after that.  It would be easy to continue revising ad nauseam, but at some point you need to close your eyes, take the plunge, and get your work out there.

I’ve been giving some thought to what I want my next project to be.  I have ideas for more Andrew-related novels, but, since they’re continuations of the story told in AToB, I don’t want to start work on them until I know whether AToB will be published.  If it’s not, I’ll have to modify their plots accordingly.

Instead of working on anything Andrew-related, I think I may try my hand at an alternate history set toward the end of pharaonic Egypt.  I have some ideas for a hero and a plot, but they’re still vague at this point since I’m trying to keep myself focused on AToB.  I’ve started a writing journal for this project and I can’t wait to see what kind of ideas take root there!