Maybe it makes some sense that the simplest and quickest novel I’ve ever written (50,300 words in 9 days) is also the easiest and quickest revision I’ve ever done. And maybe it doesn’t. How is this possible?
While I was writing Of Love and Coffee, there were moments when I hated it. (See here.) On re-reading, I do not know what I hated! This has got to be the tightest rough draft I have ever written, which is mind boggling. When I sat down to write it on Nov 21, with ten days left of NaNoWriMo, I had no idea what I was going to write. All I had was 1) it’s a romance, so there’s a couple that ends up together in the end, and 2) it takes place in Starbucks. That’s it! How did I do this? How do I do it again?
There is some really, really good stuff in this book. I’m a little stunned that I wrote it. I’ve read through the whole thing once and there are a few things that need work, a few instances where I changed my mind about something midway through so now have to go back and edit those changes into the earlier story. I mixed up names (Melanie? Melinda?), spellings of names, and there are lots of grammar and spelling errors. But other than that, the revisions are light. Nothing compared to what I just went through with Mancunian Waltz. I should have this finished in the next week or so, long before my end of winter deadline. Wow…
