I've started rewrites!

I finished the rough draft of Deep Embrace last week. It came in at 190 pages and just over 66,000 words long. Not bad! not bad at all! It's a perfect sized little novella. If it had just been a little bit longer I could've been able to market it as a tiny novel. In the past two weeks I have done so much work on it. I rewrote the beginning to include a prologue that shows Helios's kidnapping, wrote an epilogue, and decided to go back and add an extra chapter before the ending. After 12 months I am finally able to begin fixing the problems with Deep Embrace that have worried me for so long. It feels so great! I've started the rewrite of chapter one and it is SO much better than the stupid original version.

I start off in Scylla's cave from Scylla's point of view. Perse, the main character, does not enter until close to the end of chapter one. I've cut out ALOT of pointless description and backstory, which I didn't even realise was nothing but pointless fluff until a couple of days ago. It was a major palm head slap moment. You would think that after all these years of writing I would not be making the same stupid mistakes still, right?

The simple fact is beginnings are HARD. I never really know what I'm doing. I might have an idea of how to start. The image might be there. It's putting it into words that is the tricky bit. Usually, with most writers, we do not get into the real swing of things until one or two chapters in. I acutally read somewhere once to cut out the first chapter of a draft completely. Maybe even two. Cut those out and you will find your true beginning.

They're right too. I have cut out all of that pointless description and have found my true beginning which is with Scylla in her little cave. The rewrite of chapter one has been going so well (I'm barely on page two and I am almost near the point of revealing Perse's sisters!) I might actually be finished by next week. Then all I have to do is rewrite the beginning of chapter two and the beginnings of chapters three and four. The rest should be fine (there are 13 chapters in all).