Speedread Is Done – First Moon

The speedread of the first draft of the third book in the Exodus/Genesis trilogy (more commonly known as the Firewatcher series) is done! Yay! And there wasn’t much substantial to fix. Yay! And it took longer than I expected. Yay? And the fixes are all on paper, not in the computer. Boo. And I liked it better than I expected. Whew.

I intend to do a speedread of every first draft I write. Reading quickly makes the potholes (and plot holes) more obvious. If I can’t follow the story, then there’s something to fix. There’s always something, many things, to fix, but this time there was nothing major. I might be getting better at this writing business. 

I’ve done speedreads in two days, though life has meant that this one took a couple of weeks, I think. It’s all good.

There were lots of typoes. A lot of them look like correcting auto-correct that I never turned on but showed up anyway. A few missing words. Pronouns, particularly for the alien species that doesn’t have genders. Trivia small enough to be trivial, except that a publication should have such things fixed. A few in an article may be okay, but they become more distracting in a book, in my opinion.

Next, there will be weeks of the next draft, starting with the handwritten scribbles being transcribed, and joining with filled-in observations that add color. Literally, color. The draft so far has some, but a speedread identifies opportunities to describe scenes and emotions. I also intend to add in scifi references to some scifi classics from TV and the movies because this is a geeky crowd who saw a lot of that before they escaped Earth.

And more.

For most of my books I plan on ten drafts. Stay tuned. This may take fewer. They will take months, maybe a year.

Remember, I invite writers to write into this universe. Curious folks should contact me for the printed canon. If any author-wannabees show up, I’ll dig around to find it. (So much writing. So much to keep track of.)

And I guess the title will be Fire Moon. There are more appropriate titles, now that I know the story better, but I can imagine some good graphics for the cover. Next year stuff.

Is there more to say? Sure! But it is time for a celebratory lunch, and maybe, just maybe, take a break.