A Writer’s Worst Nightmare + Elf Queen Book 3 Weekly Update 6/18/23

Well, hello, hello, it’s JM again. This week has been a roller coaster of emotions. 

I had a scare. Like I almost died and withered away. 

As I was typing to make edits to Elf Queen 3 my entire book suddenly just disappeared, every single word except the one I was typing.

 *GASP!*

I stared at the screen for a minute in utter disbelief. 158k words, 7 months of my life, the entirety of book 3, gone in a second. Left only with whatever stupid word I was typing.

I think all that was left was “Anything” and then a nearly blank page with a blinking cursor mocking me with its evil henchman voice.

I frantically started hitting the “undo” button, and thankfully it came back up. I have no idea what I hit because it certainly wasn’t the backspace button. I may have somehow hit “select all” and then continued typing and it took out everything. 

I don’t know. 

But it was scary.

I do have the book backed up with several different downloads and other copies but in the moment I was stunned, and the main copy that I work in had all the edits I’d made for the day and I hadn’t made another copy yet. I write in google docs so it saves to the cloud and then I also save it to the computer. 

Anyway, as far as edits go, many hours were spent staring at the screen with a scowl trying to figure out how to fix a few issues that arose, and talking with my two beta readers trying to figure out how to make the proper adjustments. 

More staring at the screen. 

Then finally having a breakthrough and began rewriting starting at chapter 2 (chapter 1 is great imo) and got through chapter 19. Not massive rewrites but decent changes to flesh out characters and motivations better. 

It’s a process. 

And that’s what I’ll be doing in the editing stage, wanting to rip my hair out, cry, scream, think this book belongs in the trash, then I’ll see the light again and get on a roll and feel triumphant. 

Once I broke through the uncertainty, I loved making the changes and had fun with it. It’s making the book much better. 

I still have a lot of work to do before release day!

I hope you all have a wonderful week!

JM