Editing, editing, editing…

I stalled a bit on The Giant when I realised my ending sucked. Or rather: it was the sort of ending you write when you Just Want To Get It Finished Already. Which is pretty much how I was feeling when I wrote that portion. It’s not that it deviated greatly from what I desired, it was just that I rushed it, and the result was an odd shift in tone that took it somewhere completely different to what I had intended. Trouble is, having got the damn thing to the end, I wanted to move on to editing and sending it to my first readers, and the thought of going back to do a bit more writing galled me.

However, last week I decided to read it through again from the beginning – get a feel for where it was meant to be, tighten any remaining soft spots. This was actually really useful in two ways. Firstly: there were some little language tweaks to be made in the first six chapters that really helped to polish it and take it to a better place. Secondly: I really like the first six chapters. They were better than I remembered them from the editing binge I did in January. There was really very little that needed doing, and, overall, it felt like a story I could be proud of. This was massively reassuring.

So, this week I’m in a much better place to go forward and try and put this baby to rest. I think I need to revise a couple of scenes and add another at the end, but I’m more hopeful about my ability to do it and bring teh story to a more cohesive conclusion. Woot!