As you may recall from my last post, I made the decision back then to pivot from writing my new story The Departure Protocol to editing and polishing an existing story, Intervention. Now, almost three weeks later, I'm glad I did, for a variety of reasons.

Life has a tendency to throw curve balls at you at the most inconvenient times and although these last few weeks haven't been inconvenient by any means, they have been busy from a variety of aspects. If anything, these last few weeks have showed me that pivoting to editing was the right choice.

Editing is hard. Really hard. With a story like Intervention, written at a fast pace during NaNoWriMo, there's a lot to consider when editing. Are all the pieces making sense? Is the chapter good with just inline edits or does it need a complete rewrite. On and on.

Of the existing chapters, chapter 1 was the only one I've spent time on editing in the past and I just spent almost another week reviewing this chapter again. Isn't it funny how sometimes one paragraph can stump you for days and then the rest of the chapter can be sorted in just a day?

Just today, I posted a revised chapter 1 that adds a little bit to the story to set it up for a complete rewrite of chapter 2 that I completed last week. I still need to go back and edit chapter 2 but for anyone that has read it, it's 70% new material.

Chapter 1 and 2 are some of the more important chapters in a story. It's your chance to hook your reader. It was also the two chapters I struggled with the most when I wrote the story initially, primarily because the story originally started with chapter 3. I decided to expand it a bit to not make it such an abrupt beginning, to allow a bit more build-up so that it would make more sense. It was something I decided to do on the day writing began during NaNoWriMo. In other words, not the best time in the world to make major changes to your story. But, I did, and since then, I've known there were weak points in the story in those two chapters.

Chapter 2 in particular suffers from the hasty pace of NaNo, which is why I ended up rewriting it. I wanted it to feel more natural. Did I succeed? Time will tell, I suppose.

Either way, seeing forward progress on a story I haven't had the time to properly edit, it feels good. If all goes well, the new chapter 2 will be out by the end of next week.

I should add that although I'm focusing mostly on editing, I have managed to get some writing in on The Departure Protocol as well. It provides me with a break from the editing chore a few days a week and lets me continue to work on it. So, although my journey to the Wattys have taken a major detour, I feel like it's working out so far. One way or another, I'll have a polished story to submit while another one takes shape on the sidelines.