Hello everyone, and welcome to the first of my monthly blog posts as an author. My goal is to provide regular writing updates, share my thoughts on the writing and publishing process, and give occasional glimpses at what’s happening in my non-writing life. I also aim to be brief—I don’t tend to ramble in my writing, so hopefully these will be short and interesting enough to capture your attention for a few minutes before you go on with the rest of your day.
Writing update
This month, I collected all the feedback from my alpha readers for The Devouring and compiled them into a single spreadsheet. I sifted through all the comments for the actionable ones, then organized them by “general comments” and by chapter. Each alpha reader had their own column of check boxes, and I checked one off each time a reader mentioned actionable feedback. Sometimes only one reader made the comment, but other times, multiple ones did. I colored in rows with more than one box checked; the more boxes checked, the darker the color, essentially creating a heat map of feedback. This allowed me to see which issues were truly outstanding and which were just matters of opinion.
Whenever I agreed with an aspect that needed to change, I colored it green. Then, on a separate sheet, I listed these and labeled them either “major” (requires significant revisions) or “minor” (requires a small revision). I spent a few days brainstorming the solutions for all the major issues, wrote them down in a new column, then compiled them in a massive checklist divided into chapters. I know it seems like a lot of pre-work, but I found this massively helpful for distilling 1000+ comments into a list of actionable items.
Compiling this information and coming up with the revisions took only a few days. Then I began my third draft. I expected to spend all of June and July applying these revisions, but instead, I finished in two weeks! Editing was so much fun—way more fun than rewriting my manuscript from scratch. The most time I spent on one chapter was when I had to write a brand new one, with brand new scenes. That ended up being two new chapters, in the end. I even spent time rereading and revising them.
Overall, I feel excited and happy with all the revisions. At some point, I want to do a complete reread of the whole book to see if the new additions still make sense. But also, I’ll be looking for beta readers later this autumn, and they’ll be able to tell me how if those additions work or if they don’t.
After finishing the third draft, I decided to give myself two-week break before diving into the fourth draft, line edits. In the meantime, I’ve done more brainstorming for Sharp of Fang, Long of Claw. I want to get the basic chapter and scene outline into a workable state by October, since I plan to write the first draft for November’s writing challenge. (Not That One, not exactly—but basically That One, more or less.) I’d love it if I could spend October writing as much of the detailed outline/zero draft as possible in preparation, even if it’s just dialogue with important action notes. I guess we’ll see!
Recent delights
- My husband and I occasionally enjoy watching Korean dramas on Netflix. We just started Tastefully Yours, a rom-com about an asshole restaurant manager from Seoul and a stubborn but brilliant chef from the countryside. While the writing is pretty cliché (though we’re only on episode two), the acting is phenomenal, and I love the hilarious antics of the characters.
- Every Friday night, I hang out with a group of girl friends to play or stream video games. Twice now, I’ve streamed Still Wakes the Deep for them, a walking simulator in the cosmic horror genre about an electrician trying to survive a catastrophe on an offshore oil drilling platform. I think I’m very close to finishing it. The horror has been excellent, though a couple of levels have been more difficult than I thought were necessary.
A. M. Shilling 
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