Blue Moon Aurora

We are starting the second draft of our novel!  While we are still waiting for some of our readers to give us feedback we got enough from two readers to chart our path for a major rewrite of the novel.  Basically, we are giving the characters more to do, adding a little more complexity to the story arc, reducing the points of view, and generally adding to the novel.  To be honest, we were pretty conservative in how we wrote the first draft, which was too tight of a story.  Our goal is to have it finished before Christmas, which is quite doable once we get back into the writing.  I'm not going to go into any specific details about the novel at this time, but I am nearly 100% certain we are going to get it published. Actually, I am 100% confident, because if we can't find a publisher we'll self-publish.  I think this absolute faith in your book is critical to one's success as an author.  You have to believe in yourbook.  We are already ahead of 99% of the people out there who have tried to write a book, because we finished our first draft.

So some things we have learned thus far.  We work well as a team.  Yes, we have argued and disagreed about a few things, but it helps that we both have very similar likes and dislikes when it comes to character and story development.  Working together also gives us a pretty fast work pace, it took us 40 days to write the first draft and it was pretty well written. Neither of could have finished a novel alone, but together it was fun and relatively painless.  It is also important to trust your instincts.  That's key.  I think the biggest problem with the first draft was that we were overly cautious with some things we both wanted in the story.  The second draft is looking far less constrained with many things and we think it will make a far better story.  It goes back to that absolute faith in what you are writing.  Finally, the one advice you always hear, and it's good advice - use all your best stuff.  We did hold back a little on the first draft stupidly thinking about sequels, but you need to pour all you got into the book you are working on now.  I imagine it's the same with movies and television shows, at least it should be. 

Anyway, I will keep posting updates and will blog when we finish the second draft, which is probably going to be our final version though no doubt we will need to do some editting and corrections to it.