Spit, Rub, Rub, Spit, Rub, Rub, Viola!

You've heard it. I've heard it. Don't send your manuscript until it's polished. Or, as I like to say, spit-shined (just to gross people out).

You would think this wouldn't take a lot, right? Maybe just one or two revisions. A final read-through to make sure there are no glaring errors, and then let the querying begin. As I (and other writers) can attest. It's never that simple.

FURY has gone through SEVEN complete revisions. This means that I have chopped, cut, rearranged, rewritten, unwritten, shredded and reworked FURY seven freaking times. But, thank the Lord, I think I've finally gotten my manuscript to that spit-shined stage. (Spit-shining takes a tad more effort than polishing, in my opinion.)

But--hooray--it's finally there. It's finally ready. And, OMG, the feeling is almost euphoric.

Want to know the process? Sure, I'm happy to share.

1st draft -- Written in pieces and then sort of slung together. Transitions were choppy. Character arcs were barely there. Motivations were muddled.

2nd draft -- Smoothed out transitions. Thought of lots of cool plot points to add. Worked on characters, but they still came up short. Villain came up one-dimensional and too blatantly evil.

3rd draft -- Oooh, ooh! New plot twist. Worked on characters again. Added new scenes. Got rid of scenes. Reworked Fury's character (she was just too dang whiny) and gave Caden more of a background to make him less stereotypical.

4th draft -- (This is the one my critique group got to see.) Descriptions were superfluous. Transitions were choppy again. Characters were NOT sympathetic, especially Caden. Villain is still too one-dimensional.

5th draft -- Finally figured out what my characters wanted, but could not make them get there. (In real life, they would have run from each other the moment they met.) Tweaked personalities some more. Added some more of the Fae'len aspect into the story. Embellished Fury's power and gave it significance. More background info, and yet less (made it more meaningful and concise).

6th draft -- Everything is reading much smoother, but the characters are still not reaching their potential. Readers still don't care for Caden, so his introduction had to be rewritten. Devourer's powers are more specific. Fury and Caden's wants and needs are finally coming together.

7th draft -- Smoothed over jagged descriptions and transitions. Dipped deeper into Caden and Fury's heads (and hallelujah, they are finally coming across sympathetic and REAL). Rewrote some scenes that were a bit flat and missed their purpose. Found spelling errors and corrected rough syntax. And, gasp, I am DONE.

Argh! Query time!