Editing my first novel...

Just a little bit of me editing like a goober.

 

Well, phew. About a week ago I finished the rough draft of what (I think) will be the last chapter of my first novel.

I'm writing a longer story about the Misevelin Salvage crew, an adventure where they are trying to get to the bottom of a very strange event that has everyone worried: the appearance of an empty lifeboat near the orbit of Markledge (the planet where Aric & co. are based).

(by the way, you can get a feel for the characters and style by checking out either of the two novellas they're featured in)

I thought I was almost done a while ago, but a combination of impostor syndrome and plentiful distractions led to me going through a rough edit of my first draft and realizing I really needed a couple more chapters to round things out.

Now, I've finished the first drafts of those chapters and printed out the whole damned thing.

And you know what? For some reason, I'm way harsher when I edit on paper.

Trying now to do one chapter per day that I work on it, with occasional cheat days, and days off when I have other work scheduled, like podcast editing.

Anyway, I'm plugging away at it. And it's expanded from my first draft, which was only about 51,000 words (barely a novel) to over 64,000 now, with expected expansion to about 70,000 by the time I'm done, if I keep adding a few hundred words to each chapter as I edit.

And it keeps feeling better and better as I go.

Who knows? Maybe it'll actually end up pretty good.