a book's journey - it's longer than you think!

​It started in October, 2021.  I’d managed to get away on holiday in the midst of the various Covid related travel restrictions.  I spent a week by the pool, reading.
 
I used to read loads.  In my late teens and early twenties I consumed books like they were chocolate.  I’d read series after series, mostly fantasy but with a few historical fiction novels and the odd sci-fi book thrown in too.  Every night I’d read before bed.  Sometimes I’d fill bits of my day with my nose stuck in a book, too.
 
Then life happened, and I stopped.
 
I didn't stop reading completely, of course.  I still read every now and then, and I always read on holiday.  And it was during my holiday in October 2021 that my love of books was rekindled, and the story idea I'd been thinking of on and off, for over a decade re-emerged in my head. 
 
I wrote my first novel around 15 years ago.  I was in a graduate job where I had to stare at a screen all day but didn’t have enough work to keep me busy.  So writing a novel was a way to look busy.  No one really cared what I was doing, I just looked like I was doing something.
 
In 2021 I found myself in a similar position.  I had to sit at a computer all day, I had to be there in case anyone called or emailed, but the work I had to do didn’t fill my day.  So I decided to write.
 
The Queen of Vorn first materialised in my head soon after I’d written my first (not very good) novel.  I’d started writing it a couple of times before, and never really got into it.  But in 2021 I started again, and this time I couldn’t stop.  By Christmas that year, the first draft was written and I started on book 2 then 3. Meanwhile, I asked people to read my first book.  They were friends and family, people who weren’t exactly experts on writing.  Back then I was excitable, and possibly deluded, and so when their positive feedback rolled in, I believed it.  Except that doubt nibbled at me.  I just wasn’t quite sure.
 
So in the spring I asked an independent editor to give my manuscript a review.  I got her report back a month or so later and it didn’t make for great reading.  I mean the report was well written, but it didn’t exactly tell me what I wanted to hear.
 
My novel stank.
 
OK, to be fair, that’s not what she wrote, but that was the gist.  The report flagged up all the major structural issues that I already had a suspicion were there.  It highlighted the massive holes in the plot, and made it clear it needed a lot of work.  I mean, like a total re-write.
 
Mentally, I wasn’t ready for that.
 
So I cracked on with more writing.  I wrote a sequel trilogy, did loads of work on it, got it edited, published it, then un-published it.  Previous blogs talk about why I did that, that’s not the point of this post.  I want to focus on The Queen of Vorn, and its journey to a whole new world.
 
Last year, over two years since I’d written the first draft, I re-wrote The Queen of Vorn.  I was finally ready to sort the thing out. 
 
I’m sure it ended up a hell of a lot better than it was, but it still wasn’t right.  I wasn’t sure about the first few chapters; I tweaked them and reviewed the rest.  I kind of thought it was pretty good.  Then I employed someone else to give it a review.
 
This review didn’t say it stank, but it did tell me there was certainly room for improvement.  So off I went and re-wrote the thing again.  I’ve just finished version four.
 
I was curious how much of the original novel remains, I compared the chapters based on my plot log and created a nice little diagram to show the changes.  Take a look below.

There’s a lot of red there.
 
If you look at the key, you can see that red shows chapters that I wrote then axed.  There’s 33 of them all together.   I average roughly 3,000 words a chapter, so that’s nearly 100,000 words I’ve deleted in my mission to make the Queen of Vorn half decent.  For comparison, you can see the word counts of the versions themselves at the bottom of each column.
 
That’s a shed load of words that will never again see the light of day.
 
But besides all the stuff I’ve chopped, I’ve done a hell of a lot of heavy editing, too.  All the orange chapters have been significantly altered from their original versions.  Even the green ones will have been tweaked – I’ll have re-written poor descriptions and improved clunky dialogue.
 
The Queen of Vorn has taken a lot of words, a lot of time and a lot of heart ache to get it right.
 
I’m hoping now it’s half decent.
 
No one has read this version yet.  I’m going to let it stew for a bit while I work on another novel.  I’ll then come back to it and give it a read-through.  I’ll correct grammatical errors and maybe make some changes to descriptions that don’t quite work, or I might flesh out some bits and cut others.  But the bones will certainly stay the same.
 
Then it will go back to my editor.  Hopefully for a line and copy edit.  Hopefully she won’t flag up major plot holes or structural issues.  Hopefully, when she’s done, it will be almost ready for publishing.
 
Hopefully.  Time will tell.
 
I’ve written this blog for anyone who’s curious about what goes into writing a novel, or for anyone who’s writing their own.  Back in October 2021, I was deluded into thinking that I could get things right first time.  I was wrong.
 
I waffled on in my last blog about a writer’s growth.  The Queen of Vorn was the seed for me, the story that really did start my writing journey.  I’m determined to make it good.  I hope one day you get the chance to read it, that you’ll agree it's good, and you’ll tell me so.  When that happens, I’ll know all this work was worth it.
 
Curious about how it starts?  I’m sending out my first chapter in my August newsletter.  Sign up below for your chance to get an advance preview.