Hello and welcome to my mid-week Writer In Motion process post.

In last week’s revisions, I got a chance to share the newest version of my story after six different critique partners took it by the hand and said “no, no, not gonna work.” Their insight helped me to cut away the extraneous and focus on the core of both character and story.

The editor

In a random drawing, I was assigned to work with RevPit and Book Light Editorial editor, Carly Hayward. I first met Carly in the RevPit community and for two years in a row, I was dying to submit my manuscript to her. I never did, despite the fact that she likes to read the stuff I like to write. Regardless, we became friends in the community and found a shared loves of space cowboy things that got cancelled way too soon.

So when I found out she was my assigned editor, I was thrilled. And it went about as expected:

Okay, not really. There’s a lot less red-penning here than I expected. I had it in my head that I’d get the pages back and find that 90% of what I wrote wasn’t hitting the mark. In reality, a lot of the work ahead of me comes down to one thing: How to make every piece of this story have a stronger impact.

The easy edits first

Okay, so I duplicated all of Carly’s edits into a file called ‘Working Copy.’ This enables me to keep the original for reference, but still delete edits as their tackled. For this first pass, I’m going to work directly in Word (as opposed to Scrivener) and fix all the copy edits while deleting the fun, ‘loved this’ comments.

As you can see, I’ve taken care of the in-line edits and cut the number of comments nearly in half. I only have eighteen left, but they’re filled with really good questions and ideas about how to make those particular areas stronger. With a few days left until my deadline, I’ll need to think on these. Not on whether or not to use them (psst . . . I agree with every suggestion), but on how to implement them so that the story is stronger but the prose stays tight.

That’s it for today! Check back this weekend for the final story. And guess what . . . no more title changes. I’m kinda digging the current title and it really fits the heart of the story.

The story blend image

If you peek at the top of this article, you’ll see that the blend image made a huge leap forward this week. A lot of the comments I’ve received between critique partners and editors is “more whiskey,” so I tried to find a way to implement that. Except, adding a bottle of whiskey in there just feels and looks wrong. Plus most images carry a brand name label, and this woman and her world don’t exist in the same universe that our world does.

My next thought was more whiskey color, but the image already has some great earthy tones.

I needed to dig deeper into the story behind this image. i.e. The world the woman from the first draft lives in. Both this mystery woman and Khalon’s sister are trapped on a small moon that’s filled with darkness, sword-wielding horsemen, powerful magic, plant and animal shifters, and a brewing war between species.

Then I found the crow (or zankata in this world). Crows feature heavily in both my universes as they are highly intelligent, subtle in their actions, and they’re everywhere. While the zankata here possesses no magic that I’m aware of yet, it does have the ability to bond with another creature, thus shifting its underfeathers to bright colors which signify the nature of that bond.

The added zankata gives the image a deeper sense of both kinship and that something is very bizarre in this world. Next week I’ll add the final layer and create some light and sharpness adjustments to bring the blend into full form. Can’t wait to share it with everyone!

Follow the journey

Keep your eyes on my blog as I continue my journey in the coming weeks. And don’t forget Melissa and I are also giving away prizes. Don’t forget to sign up and follow this blog for your chance to let us dig into your work.

K.J. Harrowick is a freelance web developer and graphic designer with more than a decade of industry experience on a diverse range of projects. As a child, she fell in love with fantasy worlds like those found in the books of Andre Norton and Mercedes Lackey, which continued well into adulthood with the worlds of Ivan Cat, Rand & Robin Miller, Terry Brooks, Orson Scott Card, and E. R. Mason. She began to world build and create fantasy languages in 2004, and in 2014 it became a full-blown passion to write and publish her own books. Currently she resides in the rainy Pacific Northwest where she works with a broad range of client projects, plots how to destroy her characters’ lives, and occasionally falls down rabbit holes.

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