I did it!!!! I finished my edits for the Queer Crocodile book.

After a week of moving/unpacking, I finished rewriting/editing the Queer Crocodile book in August 2nd at 3am. It is now with my poor editor who has to make sense of my mess. I’m so excited, but also so exhausted. 

Word Count

I cut about 13,000 words, with 10,000 being cut during the last five days. That means my total wordcount went from 129,000 to 116,000. There are two connected chapters that I cut a lot out of and I am worried that maybe they need to be merged or rethought, but I’m going to see what my agent says. 

My original wordcount goal was 118K-119K, so the fact that I’m now sitting at 116K is amazing. It’s gives me roughly 3-4k to work with if I need to re add some of what I cut. I just can’t go over 120K again, haha

And, yes, I added at least 300 footnotes and probably could have added a bit more in the last act, but am also unsure how well the footnotes will go over with readers, so…..we’ll see what the editor says?

How Did I Do?

Caffeine. Lots and lots of caffeine

First, I had amazing beta readers who pointed out a lot of the dialogue/narrative I had was more for me to understand what was happening and not needed for the reader. So a lot of that was cut, reworked/moved to different chapters, or added as footnotes. 

Honestly, most of the cuts came from the first half of the book, which really surprised me. The first twelve chapters have been pretty stable since I wrote the original draft and are the foundation that the rest of the story rests on. Also the characters in that section are supposed to have a legendary feel, this unchanging quality to them. I wanted to add a hint more of humanity to these characters without jeopardizing that, while also acknowledging that these are mouthpieces for Kingsley and he’s included them for very specific reasons. Everything Kingsley includes this book has to be for a reason and then there needs to be an alternate reason that Alex gets to point out. It’s a complicated dance and narrative haha. 

Changing the first twelve chapters was nerve wracking and I am still nervous I may have ruined the flow. It forced me to reconnect with characters I haven’t really worked with for a while and making sure they stayed true to who they are while also growing in response to my own growth as a writer was hard. At the same time, I was able to get to key characteristics and plot points quicker which is cool to notice as a writer. You always want to be growing as a writer and this was evidence that I’ve learned a lot from five years ago haha.

If reworking the first act was about streamlining things, the second act was all about restarting. I originally broke the book into four parts, but the second part was the weakest and simply wasn’t standing on its own. So I had to take parts of it and merge it with part one and the rest were merged with part three, so it’s now a three part book again haha. I also took a step back from focusing on plot and allowing Kingsley’s own emotional turmoil and the turmoil of those around him to come through more via the use of footnotes and rearranging where some of the extra material is added. I like the second part a lot more now and think it provides a rare glimpse into the cost Kingsley and his friends bore while resisting the Hevian Empire. 

Speaking with the Characters

When I wasn’t cutting words, I was rearranging the entire plot. I moved chapters up or down and merged different chapters together. One of the big notes from my beta readers was that the narrative wasn’t really shaping the plot, so I had to beef up some parts and add small directional notes here and there to hopefully strengthen the flow of the plot. 

My biggest challenge with this book was getting Kingsley to talk to me. He is a very traumatized person who hides more than he shares or just block certain things out and that can work, but other times I needed him to be clearer with me. Allowing me to directly talk to the reader as in “this chapter is about X. You may have heard x about y, but that’s not true” Or even do misdirecting directions, like this chapter is about x but at the end you’re like wait….wasn’t it really about y? It adds another complex layer to an already complex novel. 

The second challenge was trying to work in Alex’s own plotline which was completely revamped during this rewrite. Alex originally started as just that voice that enabled Kingsley to tell his tale but he’s grown as Kingsley’s antagonist, someone who not only contradicted Kingsley, but had a complicated history with Kingsley and that was going to affect how Alex told Kingsley’s story. The more I expanded upon Alex’s story, the more the trial would come into the narrative. I never knew what to do with the trial because it doesn’t work unless you understand the entire war which is what the series is about, so it’s been a struggle to figure out how to work in so reader’s understand while also realizing that this is a bit of a blueprint for what the rest of the series is about. 

But it was also interesting to see how Kingsley’s and Alex’s narrative started to reflect each other. There is one letter Alex writes that is then echoed in Kingsley’s memoir even though they’re talking about two different things. So that was cool, haha.

I resisted working Alex’s story in for so long because I didn’t want to add more words and pull focus from Kingsley’s story, but I think through the use of footnotes, I was able to work it in without jeopardizing the focus on Kingsley’s memoir itself.

Basically, the story is Kingsley’s novel and voice with the trial as background noise, that should threaten Kingsley’s story but doesn’t take over until the very end and then it consumes everyone and sets the stage for the Demon book and the rest of the series. 

Setting the Stage for Future Books

I think the most exciting part about this rewrite is that I was able to make sooooo many references to the Demon book (the second book) and the Desert Book (the third book), which was always a goal. I really want readers to see it as a circle, because all three books occur at the same time and what happens in Kingsley will directly impact the plot of the third book which directly impacts the Demon book and so on. It’s a lot like Dark. There should be a sense of where is the beginning and where is the end and then that expands into the series as a whole. Everything everyone in this series does can be traced to something that happened in the past, even if it isn’t their past. And the glimpses in the future should have the reader realize that the ‘present’ not only shapes the future, but the “future” affects how the present is understood. It’s time travel without the actual time travel hahahah. 

Overall, I’m so happy with the progress I made. I was actually sad when I finished this draft. While I’ve queried it before, I’ve never had this “woah, this is the quality of a published book” feeling before. Or even that sad “this is truly one of my final rewrites”. I’ve wanted to publish this book for a long time and every time I thought it was ready, there was room for reworking. I knew it but felt it was potentially my own perfectionism getting in my way. This time, however, I think it truly reads like a published work and I’m truly connecting to the emotional core of the book. Something Kingsley and I struggle with, haha. Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation and it’s just a hot mess. We’ll see what the editor says. Right now I’m going to sleep for three weeks straight.