Life of a Suburban Unicorn, my current work in progress, is almost done. Unlike Rex Stoute, my writing doesn’t come out good the first draft, or even first several drafts. I start out with incoherent, upgrade to sensible but bad, and comb through it 476 times looking for errors before I call it done. By this time I hate it with a passion, and put it away until it has been so long since I’ve looked at it, I don’t even remember writing it. When I reread it, I’m amazed at the sheer beauty of the writing inside, and can’t imagine why I didn’t rush out immediately and try to publish it.

I believe I’m on the 475th revision, mostly due to this live journal page here. If you’ve read Twilight, you’ll enjoy reading the sporking of the book, and others in the series. Yes, even if you liked Twilight. In fact, you might get more out of it.

I’ve never read the rest of the series, mostly because I got New Moon and put it down unread after the first three chapters. I loved Twilight however, so when my friend sent me the Sporking of Twilight, I went in prepared to defend it to the death.

I also realized, after reading it and comparing the observations of the critic to my copy of Twilight…well…it’s accurate. All these flaws really are in this best selling novel. I pictured my own novel being ripped apart in the same way, hustled over to my manuscript, popped it open, and started asking questions. Would this person really say that? What’s really going on here? Is this accurate?

So far I’ve only double checked two chapters of my novel, but I can see the improvements already. I can’t wait to get to the juicy stuff.

That’s it for now. Tomorrow: Query letters!

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