Whooooooa, livin’ on a prayer! Take my hand, we’ll make it, I sweeeeeear!
Okay, okay. I’m done.
*humming softly*
That’s right, friends! PitchWars is halfway over! I can’t believe it! To sum it up so far:
Truly. I loved my manuscript before, but the amazing Molly E. Lee has helped me massage it into a better version of itself without losing any of the aspects that made it special to me.
I feel like a horse finally given rein to gallop. The subplots are stronger and more fully fleshed out, the main character’s personality and motivations are more distinct, and the relationships feel more authentic and nuanced. I deleted about 2000 words then added roughly 10,000 new words, and I’m really happy about all of it!
And there’s still explosions, and kissing, and intrigue, and heart-pounding escapes. It’s fun stuff!
Oh, and I killed someone.
IN THE BOOK. Not real life. A character was slated to die in an earlier draft, but my writing classmates were so angry about it that I un-killed the character. When I mentioned this to Molly, her response was a gasp followed by “I think you should DO it. I mean, I don’t want [redacted] to die… but you should do it. Just make it hurt more.. Make the reader CARE first.”
Live action footage of Molly and me discussing this change:
So the character is dead once more, and this time it truly hurt my heart to do it. Which is a good sign.
Yes, writers are strange.
(To my writing teacher, who said she almost threw my book across the room the first time….Sorry, Kristie!)
Just some light edits to go from this point forward. I could fiddle with my first page for a thousand years, but it’s getting close. If I suddenly fell asleep for a week or two I would still be okay with submitting to the Agent Round on the day I woke up, if that makes sense. A book isn’t finished until it’s published, but this draft feels solid and polished.
Plus, yesterday I presented the latest version of my pitch to the Pitchwars mentees and it got enthusiastic thumbs-ups, so YAY!
In ONE MONTH my entry will be up on the PitchWars YA showcase!