Hey guys! So I briefly talked about this in a previous entry but I finished the first round of editing. Yaaaaay!

Let me tell you, it took some time. Practically the entire summer. I was able to go back, look at my notes, and really move things around.

It was very enlightening; like taking a step back to see the full picture. So the first round of editing was basically going in and checking for typos, fixing the meatier parts of the plot, and getting a solid story to work with.

I have already started the second round of editing which is going much quicker thanks to the first round. (To give you an idea, in the first round of editing it would take almost a month to edit one singular chapter. In the second round, it only took a few weeks to reach chapter 5!)

This second go around is the truly fun part because it’s more about reading the manuscript aloud and listening to the syntax, the voice, and making it flow like water. There’s definitely an art to this, that I find myself in awe of the writers that came before me; the hard work they did to create masterpieces is truly astonishing.

So what happens now?

It took a lot of restraint not to go ahead and start querying. The thing is, it’s best to make sure your manuscript is as polished as possible before doing so.

I really wanted to hire an editor for the second go around but have yet to find someone I’d like to work with. For now, I am doing my own edits.

Another reason why I am still editing is because of word count. The book ended up at a whopping 100, 300 words. Although I felt that every word counted, there was a lot that was cut.

I came to this realization when I drafted a query letter and saw the count on the metadata. It just didn’t look enticing for an agent to pick up a 100k manuscript by a debut author. It would lower my chances of representation.

That’s not to say it’s not possible to get representation, just that it would give me fewer options to work with. I have been eyeing a couple of agents that I truly want to work with—which is exciting—but in the meantime this is my prepping period.

The goal

So the goal as of now is to cut my word count from 100k to 90k words at the maximum. Ideally I would want it to be 85k but I’m not sure if I’d be able to cut that much. We’ll have to wait and see!

With any luck, the next update I will be discussing the rules of the query letter and my thoughts on it. Thank you guys so much for all your support and genuine interest in the book! ♡

Comment your thoughts on the editing process! Did you hire an editor? What was that experience like for you?