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I just finished an incredible book, THE HANGING WOODS by Scott Loring Sanders. I'll post the review once it's been posted at Teens Read Too.

I haven't worked on my YA yet. No, that's not entirely true. I've been thinking about it. I wrote a new chapter last Tuesday evening. I shared it with my critique group Wednesday. It features a new character that showed up a few chapters ago. Although this is a minor character, she has a significant impact on my protagonist. Yet this is only the second time we've seen her and it's chapter thirty-seven! She appeared the first time in chapter twenty-eight. So Linda, my awesome crit buddy felt that if she's going to have that much of an impact, she should be introduced to the reader much sooner.

Understand, my chapters are short, especially for a YA. My longest chapters weigh in at just over 1300 words and my shortest chapter is just over 200 words. The first twenty five chapters only involve the accident and death of her best friend, and the intensity of the days following. So my protagonist is surrounded by family and close friends and has very little to do with the outside world from the early Sunday morning accident until she goes back to school on Thursday, chapter twenty-six.

This is a random person that she connects with in a coffee shop. So, if you look at chapter numbers, it appears she shows up very late in the story, yet she's one of the first people she interacts with once she gets back into the routine of life. I've found a spot where I can show her, although at that point neither the reader or my characters will know of her significance. So I'm going to play with that and see how it works. I probably won't know for sure until I finish the entire revision and read it straight through. Or let someone else read it.

This revision, as I keep calling it, has turned out to be a total rewrite of the book. I went to a high school football game last weekend and a couple of former students, now sophomores, sat behind me. They asked how my book was coming. You can imagine their reaction when I told them I was totally rewriting it. LOL. They're still at the point they don't understand why their teacher makes them turn in rough drafts before typing the final paper. Rewrite an entire book? They told me I was crazy. I told them they were probably right.

When I started this rewrite, I thought I was just starting the book in a new place. I cut about 10,000 words from the beginning. My original "finished" novel could be divided into thirds, before the May accident, the week after the accident, and entering college in the fall. I started before the accident so the reader to get to know the girls and their relationship. Often, I myself felt I knew the dead girl better than my main character. Then I lingered over the necessary grief and funeral type scenes, and then jumped over the summer completely. I enrolled her in college without her best friend who was supposed to be her roommate. Instead she had to interact with a new roommate, yada, yada, yada, so that in the end, she would be able to accept her friend's death and learn to live without her.

Now, the novel starts with the accident. The novel is now about Nicki, not her dead friend. The reader sees their friendship through Nicki's eyes. I have now focused on Nicki and she has become so much more. More multidimensional. There's more at stake now, because Nicki has a brother. A brother who needs her, although neither of them realize just how much. I've also found out more about the secondary characters. The story has become more immediate, if that makes any sense. I've gone from simply skipping the long lonely summer without Jennifer, to making her live it, experience it. And there's so much more that happens during the summer that I am probably also going to cut most of the original chapters that take place once she goes to college. Including them, I believe, will be anticlimactic.

Had you told me a year ago that almost my entire YA was going to be deleted and that I was going to completely rewrite it, I would never have believed you. And I probably would have been defensive and angry that all that time and work was wasted. But I tell you now, it wasn't wasted. That first book was an exercise in learning who my characters were. And although they are still surprising me, they are now ready to tell their story. I still sometimes think I'll never be finished, LOL, but I'm getting closer every day. Okay. Week. Month?

More than you wanted to know, I'm sure. But I'm feeling good about the progress of this book and wanted to share this part of my journey with you.

Happy writing all!