The Light Side of the Moon Rewrite is finished!

So I finished the rewrite of The Light Side of the Moon!!! Huzahh!!! 

Rosie thinks I over use the words: “picked up” so she’s checking out the Thesaurus.

I send it back to 48Fourteen  today, I hope they like it.

While I was worried about word count, but ended getting it at 118,000 words which is in the high end of 48Fourteen publishable zone–but at least its in it! Also I’ve seven deleted scenes once we find out The Light Side of the Moon’s final fate.

Since many authors might wonder doing a full rewrite is like: here is everything that changed.

One of the issues was the work was too episodic, so after reading my feedback emails, I basically decided I needed to write out a “mission” sentence.

Note this is not an elevator pitch, but it tells me what the book is about: Five people of different castes will journey to the moon and work to build a utopian society out of a prison colony.

In every scene, I asked myself: does it fit with the story?

The original book was over 80 chapters, I got it down to 47.

While some chapters were unneeded, I also ended up combining chapters. I had too many “dialogue chapters” when I could just added important dialogue to chapters when more action was going on.  I also need to add to five chapters in order to make them transition to the next part of the novel.

I rewrote the first five chapters from the beginning. While Ellie and Ian’s stories didn’t change too much in overall plot, I made sure that the other important character’s motivation was much more clear, added richer description. The other thing I did was double check everything. Placement of the colony, German and French swearing, etc.

I’m conflicted about writing this next part, but it was amazing how many people wanted to help–and didn’t.  I made a decision after I got my feedback from my publisher that I needed another POV. Everyone basically told me I was wrong. They told me to cut Mr. Johnson and Theodore Kessler POV’s though I knew I needed them. I got to the point where I asked a few friends if I could talk out some of my questionable chapters. The POV was not my question! Instead of listening–they kept talking. Worse, they were telling me things that were opposite to what my publisher said. If someone has a problem they ask to talk out: shut up and listen!

Authors, you need to do to reach your readers and explore your world’s themes–do it! That doesn’t mean all your words and ideas are gold, but it does mean sticking to your guns.

Finally, one of my worse writing habits is “fixing the sentence” but forgetting to take out the problem word, so I used Grammarly  chapter by chapter.  Then I re-read the entire manuscript aloud.

I got my feedback letter on March 28th, the entire rewrite took me nearly four months. Of course, who knows? My book still might not be what 48Fourteen is looking for, but it is the story I want to tell.