If you're a fan of the HGTV show Fixer Upper--one of mine and Jen's favorite shows--you all know Chip Gaines' favorite day of them all: Demo Day. The day where it's time to gut the kitchen, uncover the shiplap, and expose the problems hidden behind the sheet rock prior to Chip fixing everything up and Joanna making it their clients' dream home.
(Seriously, I may watch this show a little too much.)
Today, with JJ9's first draft soaring over 95,000 words yesterday, I start doing a little demo work on my next release, Persuaded By The Reflections: A Thriller, the follow-up to The Long Crimson Line: A Thriller; call it Edit Day, if you will. Except I won't gut it all the way down to the studs and completely re-work it, nor will it take me a full day; that would be suicide, ladies and gentlemen.
This project will take me upward of a week, I believe. It's a 331-page, 135,000-plus word behemoth of a story that I haven't looked at since before noon on February 6, and it's time to look at this with fresh eyes. There will be new words added, I know this: there is detail I didn't put in the first draft, detail I snagged while driving through Worcester in March. And I'm sure there will be some words which don't fit the story carved out.
From what I recall in showing bits and bobs to author friends, they love the writing, so it is my hope that I won't have to do too much to it. But I'm not relying on that thought; I have to make this book better than it already is--this could be the book that does more than define me.
It could be the book that sends me into the stratosphere.
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