Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Rewriting works

I finished my reread of Stag at Bay last night and did some light editing. The first half needs work. The second half--well, remember last summer I trashed the entire second half of that book and rewrote it? Well, I had forgotten that.

But when I read the whole thing, it's obvious. The first half is light, rather slow, a little underwritten. The second half is much better written, with better pacing, and it's dark. It's dark. I wrote something dark! And I didn't even realize it.

So eventually I need to work on the first half, and there are some changes to the second half that I think I need to make too. But it sure makes me feel better to see solid evidence that my writing has improved in the last two years.

5 comments:

Aaron Polson said...

Excellent! It's nice to realize your craft is improving. (And I knew you had some dark in there...we'll make a horror writer of you yet).

K.C. Shaw said...

Compared to horror, this is more dimmish than really dark. But it's a lot darker than I usually write!

Jamie Eyberg said...

I find it amazing how much we do grow as writers in such a relatively short time period. Good luck with the edits and I can't wait to see it in print.

Carrie Harris said...

"Dimmish." Can I borrow that word? I don't write horror either, but I've been accused of dimmishness every once in a while. :)

K.C. Shaw said...

Jamie--Thanks, I'm pleased at being able to actually see the difference instead of just suspecting it.

Carrie--Dimmish is available free for all to use. Just because I have perfected dimmishness doesn't mean others can't aspire to it. :)