Cherished by the Moon

Wenny and her Parents

Writing is too hard. Why don’t I just read books instead of trying to write them?

I’ve finished the first draft of Daughter of Independence and I’m now revising and rewriting, with help from a friend who is a skilled editor. And rewriting is the devil. It is easy to find the flow when hooning through the initial draft, to be in the zone where one loses all sense of the passage of time. But rewriting trips up time.

I can deal with writer’s block, but structural edit block is something else. It’s my baby – how can I cut it up and reassemble it? But I must, if I want the reader to be carried by the flow of the story.

And then comes the line edit. I must look at each sentence and ask how it can be better constructed. I have to interrogate each word about its necessity. I must put meaning on trial – will it be as clear to the reader as it is to me? And I hadn’t noticed my comma addiction – they’re everywhere, so I must fix each one with a stern gaze and ask it what it’s doing there.

So slow. And it could go on forever. But one has to stop somewhere, and for the moment I’ve stopped rewriting the Prologue and Chapter 1, Cherished by the Moon, and posted them here to provide a foretaste of the book. All comments welcome – I’d love to know your reaction to the extract.

That’s the first 2000 words rewritten. Only 63,000 to go.