On Wednesday night, I set myself the goal of spending the next 5 days (Thursday-Monday) going through the notes in the manuscript I’d just gotten back from my amazing beta reader and editing the manuscript according to the notes and to whatever I noticed that needed to be edited. After a conversation with my beta reader, I added “add new content for a higher stakes moment” to the list.
Five days. A (then) 70,000-plus word manuscript, plus however much new content I needed to add to make the stakes higher for my new werewolf couple, Ren Torres and Xavier Pelly.
Thursday morning, I checked my workplace’s scheduling app and discovered that, unlike pretty much every week, I’m scheduled to work on Monday. Which meant I now only had *4* days to get this all done. I sat down around 7am and started going through the beta notes and editing simultaneously.
By Thursday evening, I’d reached page 107 of the (then) 131-page file. I’d also reached the point where I’d decided to start with the new content, so I stopped for the night.
Friday morning, I sat down around 7am and started writing the new content, which I’d spent the previous couple of days mentally planning.
It ended up being longer than I’d intended. Friday night around 8:30, I stopped, with the new content completed at 10,171 words. (To anyone who complains that prolific writers must be using generative AI: I do not use generative AI in anything. Not my writing, not my book covers. *I*, the human being typing this post, wrote 10,171 words in a single day. I know other authors who write full-time who are able to sustain such a pace *every* day. 10,000 words a day would equal a full-length novel in 6-10 days, give or take.)
I still had a couple of chapters to go in the book. More edits and beta read notes, plus making sure that those last two chapters followed logically from the new content. I went to bed Friday night planning to start on those chapters the next morning.
Yesterday morning, I sat down around 7am and got to work. A little more new content to make the transition into the second-to-last chapter of the book smoother. Deleting some of the existing content because it no longer fit the story. Editing. Going through the remaining beta notes.
I was finished at 1pm. All beta notes addressed; all editing done. (For this round. More editing will happen before the book is published.) New content in place–and my beta reader was right, having higher stakes does make the story much better.
I rewarded myself with a 7th or 8th “reheat” of Heated Rivalry yesterday afternoon/evening.
This post might sound like I’m bragging, and I definitely see that, but it isn’t my intention to be prideful and boasting. I come from decades of being told my accomplishments don’t matter, that I don’t do anything worthwhile–and I am proud of myself for what I accomplished over those three days. So I’m sharing. The difference is I’m not sharing it to make others feel bad (which is how I interpret bragging; “look what I did that you can’t do, nyah nyah”), but to remind *myself* to feel good about what I’m able to do when I try.
This novel is titled Virtually Guarded and is the first book of my planned new series Virtual Haven Pack, which will follow a different couple in each book and centers around an online support group for LGBTQ+ werewolves. Virtually Guarded will enter the world on September 10. The stock image below fits my mental image of Xavier Pelly (and will probably form part of the book’s cover).
