The never-ending process of writing a novel

At every book store reading or book group discussion of Fill the Sky I have been blessed to attend, there are a few editingquestions that come up every time: “How long did it take you to write the book?” “How many drafts did you have to write?” and “What is your process?” The short answers are that it took me 3 years to write Fill the Sky, that I have no abacus sophisticated enough to count the number of drafts, and that my process is still…well… in process. So I often tell this story instead… one gal’s painful experience of revision on the way to publication. This is from an essay I wrote called “The First Time My Book Was Done,” which first appeared in The Quivering Pen: I have always been a big believer in revision, so by the time my first manuscript was done, it had been through countless iterations. I had work-shopped almost every chapter, revisited tricky scenes with my writing group, and incorporated feedback on the entire manuscript from three trusted readers. The changes along the way ran the gamut, from adding additional points of view, to removing whole pages of exposition, pretty paintings that were hard to destroy but had no impact on the characters in the room. Then I spent several months honing and polishing. And finally, I was done. That is, until I started over. Read the full post here from “Quivering Pen”