The Rise of the Iliri series was written quite a while ago. 2013, to be exact. Books 1 – 5 took three months to fly off my fingers. When book 5 hit 250,000 words, I had to pause. Anything over 100,000 words is a pretty thick book, and it was well beyond that point. In other words, I had to rethink my entire plot, break up the book into two, and somehow make the story have an ending. (I absolutely hate cliffhanger endings).
And so I moved on, learned some things, and wrote some other books. Today, I’m in the process of re-reading book 3 of that series (while book 2 is spending time with the editor). WHAT THE HELL WAS I WRITING?
Seriously. This crap is bad bad bad bad. I can’t even wrap my mind around what I was thinking! She walked outside. She looked up. She found a horse. NOPE! This most certainly will not do!
*ahem* So, I have begun some intense editing. Entire chapters are being rewritten. My delete key is getting some serious workouts. Hopefully, my editor will take her same massive and evil red pen to it that she does with the rest of my work, and get rid of the parts that should embarrass me. I want to make sure those novice lines never see the light of day.
When I started writing, I thought I was good at it. I mean, I had some natural talent for storytelling, but not so much for writing it down the way it should be. Thankfully, I was smart enough to research, and not just press that publish button. I read. I learned. I am still striving to perfect my craft, and recognizing that making errors doesn’t make me a bad person is the first part of that. Some things my editor sends back are shameful (There should never be a comma before the verb. What was I THINKING???) but it has no bearing on me as a person. It doesn’t mean I failed. In fact, being able to take the correction with grace is a lot more impressive to most people.
I know all of this. So why am I reading this early book and wishing that I could hide it away, start over, and pretend like I didn’t write this? Big girl panties, Auryn. It’s time to put them on and make this a work of art. Gonna take a lot of elbow grease.