Revisions, Revisions, Revisions

Hi All! 

My first round of revisons are done and with my agent. (To be sent out 4/30/10) Since 4/21/10 I have:

1) Brainstormed with my agent.
2) Got approval for my planned revisions from Harlequin Medical Romance.
3) Deleted 16,000 words from my manuscript.
4) Added 8,000 words including three new scenes, a prologue and an epilogue
5) Moved the heroine finding out she was pregnant from chapter 3 to chapter chapter 11. (And what a nightmare that turned out to be because I needed to edit the pregnancy out of every chapter in between.)
6) I made the hero more lovable (at least tried to) and made his motivation and conflict clearer.
7) I deleted several characters and scenes that either did not move the romance forward or moved it forward via external plot twists.
8) I added more scenes with the hero and heroine together to show the developing romance.
9) I proof read, re-read, and read again until I thought my eyes would surely bleed. (They didn’t.)
10) I typed, moved, deleted, and re-typed enough words for a complete second novel. (And if not, close to it!)

In the end, I am very happy with the result.

If I had more time, would I have made more changes? Definately yes, because it’s my nature to tinker.

Would additional changes have improved the story? I’m not so sure. (I’m guessing the editor at Harlequin Medical Romance will tell me!)

Now I wait. And as much as I HATE WAITING, it’s actually very exciting having a full manuscript being reviewed by an editor with an eye on publishing it. And it beats getting a rejection letter. Whatever happens, this has been a wonderful learning experience and has motivated me to get back to work on other projects, including the sequel to Love, Hospital Style. Because you never know…..

So what have you all been up to?

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