IWSG: Editing and Writing Friends

This post is for the Insecure Writer's Support Group, which posts every first Wednesday of the month!

I have finished the fourth and last draft of my WIP, The Keegans of Banner's Edge. I have a query draft that was read by my writing group and is now ripe for a revision. I have several literary agents in mind and am putting my list together.

But first, I am editing up my manuscript. Making sure things are as tight as I want them to be. Making sure things make sense (see Translating from the Rei for the truly wacko things I found in a past revision). Formatting so that each chapter begins on a new page.

Also, I'm cutting out a character. It probably seems like I'm cutting out this darling awfully late in the process, but--well--I mean, it's not gone out into the world yet, so it's not late at all. He's a minor character who has been in the story since at least draft two and he's one of my MC's few true friends, which seemed like a reason to keep him, but actually, between nailing down his American Quaker "plain speech" and figuring out that I couldn't find an effective way to use him in the later parts of the story, he had to go. I have too many characters whose time in the story effectively ends when the family moves to England already.

Editing might be one of my favorite parts of the writing process, making everything read nicely. It's kind of like the calm after the storm of getting the draft done and calm before the storm of sending the thing out.

I was in chat with a few members of my writing group. One of them is in the query trenches already, the other two sent in applications for PitchWars and are preparing to query as well. I feel like it's good peer pressure to be in their company. They even read my query and chapter one, which got the ball rolling on my editing process. There is really nothing like a great group of writers to make a writer feel more secure.

I want to thank Karla for sending me Daily Life in a Victorian House for the next story.