I might be on sabbatical from my primary job, but I’m still working. A lot.
Between adjunct teaching and a part-time retail job, I’m working about 20-25 hours a week. I’m also working about 10 hours a week on the rewrite of my book originally called, A Train Called Forgiveness.
I’ve found a groove and have worked about halfway through the book’s content. It’s wound up being a little less of a “rewrite” than it is a deep edit. Here’s what I’m doing:
- I’m changing the fictional names of people and places to the real names. In some cases I might only use first names.
- I’m adding some occasional commentary from my current perspective.
- I’m editing punctuation. In the original story, I used a lot commas for effect. I’m minimizing some of that excess.
- I’m beefing the story up a little. I’m not really adding much new information, but I’m rewriting some sentences and paragraphs to add more detail. The original book was just over 40,000 words. I’m trying to make the new version of the book closer to 50,000.
As I don’t have my original text file to work from, (It’s back in Washington State on an external hard drive in a box in storage.), I’m actually retyping the entire book as I go. I’m using a hard copy of the book as my guide. I work for an hour or two each morning.
I’m happy with how the project is going and I should be completed with the draft by late November or early December. Once the draft is completed, I may look for an editor and an agent or publisher. But that goes beyond the scope of the sabbatical requirements. – dse
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