Hope you're having a lovely summer. I just returned from hubby's family reunion in Arizona where it poured rain, but we had canopies up and just kept on going, eating, talking, and having our very own mini Family Olympics, complete with medals and cheers in celebration of the Summer 2012 world-wide Olympics.
The day before I left town I received my first editorial letter from my brand new editor at my brand new publisher, Harpercollins. Exciting stuff! It's really happening! My book of eight years of research and writing and revising, of selling and then not selling (long story I won't go into here) is scheduled for Fall 2013. And I've recently learned that it will be a LEAD TITLE!!! Wow. It's hard to take that in. My little ole book is important to a major publisher like Harpercollins. I'm blown away, thrilled to pieces, grateful and humbled.
The pressure is on to make it rise even higher in story/plot and suspense and writing and characterization. I want it to sparkle, shimmer and shine. I want readers to enjoy it. Actually I want readers to LOVE it and talk about it to everyone they know like crazy! Ha! I want them to fall in love right along with Jayden and Kadesh. I want them to feel the sweat and danger and hardships of desert life in 1750 BC. I want them to belly dance and shimmy their hips right along with Jayden in the fragile and emotional world of the women and the goddess temples.
So I'm reading my 8 page, single-spaced letter, digesting the pencil-edited manuscript, and am going to begin my own personal compilation of notes for the changes I need to make. About several pages worth. Even though I refer to the editorial letter often, I usually like to do one of my own. As I accomplish each task or goal, I can cross it off and feel that I'm making progress.
I also take the number of pages - 325 - and divide them by the number of days I have been given to do the work - 20 Days Total, Mondays thru Saturdays (I never work Sundays) - and then I know how much I need to do each day. For this project this means I need to revise 16.25 pages per day. Which doesn't sound like much, but there are some big questions to answer, dozens of them, and I will be focusing on plot, character, setting and timeline for each and every scene. So the pages will be painstaking to cut and line-edit as well as enlarging and honing.
The work usually begins slowly, tentatively, because I haven't worked on this book for over a year, and that was just a light edit before my agent submitted the project to editors (the trilogy sold in a significant deal in 2.5 weeks!). The last time I did any sort of bigger changes to this book was about 15-16 months ago. During these past many months I've written another book, gone through editorial production with it as well as written two new proposals for my editor at Scholastic so my head has been elsewhere for a long time.
So, as I begin, I cling to the first paragraph of my editorial letter and my new and brilliant editor's generous words:
"When I first read this, it was unlike anything I had read in a long time. It thoroughly captivated me—the setting, the culture, the romance . . . You have a wonderfully complex, deep story here . . . a sweeping epic romance!
Smiling and chewing my fingernails at the same time!
~Kimberley
10 comments:
That is so exciting. Congrats and good luck on the work!
Sounds like you're going to be busy. I'm glad you're so positive about it. lol
That's a ton of work, but it's always exciting to see the changes revision brings. I'll be cheering you on.
Wow--that is a pretty crazy deadline--but it's anyone can do it, it's YOU. And as someone battling a crazy deadline of her own at the moment, I can sympathize.
So exciting to watch all the good things happen for you!
I tried to post another comment, but it seems to have been lost in cyberspace (if it finds it's way here eventually, I apologize for the double post).
It sounds like you have some crazy hard work ahead of you, but I know you can do it!
I understand how it can be slow at first to get back into a MS that you've not looked at for quite awhile. But once you're back into it, I hope things move right along for you!
It sounds like you have a great plan of attack! Try not to stress out about it too much. Remember, if you ever get stuck, make brownies! There's nothing a pan of brownies can't make better, right? ;-)
Sending good vibes and virtual brownies your way (I'd send real brownies, but I'm not sure they'd be edible by the time they reached you)!!
Congratulations!!! I'm so excited for you!! Can't wait to read it!
Editorial letter sounds so daunting. Looks like you have a sound method to tackle them.
It's about time you have a lead book. Congratulations!
Good luck! I can't wait to read it and all your other forthcoming novels. Yay!
Afer reading Theresa's comment, I think you should do a blog post on editorial letters and let us all in on your method. Please. Please. Please.
I appreciate all the comments and kudos and cheers and kicks in the "derriere", everyone! :-)
And Christina . . . interesting idea for a blog post. What sorts of things are you wanting to hear about editorial letters? The kind of things my editor wants me to revise - or how I do it? Because I'm not sure I can answer the second question coherently!
Thanks again, my wonderful friends!
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