…so I finished a draft I was sufficiently pleased with to show to an editor. I found one on Reedsy and then began working on the second novel.
I chose a developmental editor, the type of editor who helps writers conceptualize the story and its flow. This is a woman who knows the romance genre fairly well, so I trust her judgment. I’m sure learning a lot about the conventions not only of romance novels, but of fiction in general. Once she made her suggestions, she urged me to refer to essays written by various writing experts.
This is not like my old writing within non-fiction, so I have work to do. She liked reading it, but she thinks I can do another draft. Because I’m a good enough writer, she doesn’t think I need a proofreader (ha!), but I should look next to finding a copy editor to do a line by line edit.
So I’m looking at her suggestions in track changes, and I’m cutting a bit from the early chapters (that I have reviewed so far). But I’m not ready to give up these precious paragraphs! I worked so hard on them, I want to use them somewhere, somehow.
Now I just have to think about story lines to develop in some new chapters, and how I’m going to write them. Wish me luck!
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Barbara James 