Living Dead Girl: Elizabeth Scott
Hardcover, 170 pages
Published September 2nd 2008 by Simon Pulse
Summary:
Once upon a time, I was a little girl who disappeared.
Once upon a time, my name was not Alice.
Once upon a time, I didn’t know how lucky I was.
When Alice was ten, Ray took her away from her family, her friends — her life. She learned to give up all power, to endure all pain. She waited for the nightmare to be over.
Now Alice is fifteen and Ray still has her, but he speaks more and more of her death. He does not know it is what she longs for. She does not know he has something more terrifying than death in mind for her.
This is Alice’s story. It is one you have never heard, and one you will never, ever forget
My thoughts:
Y’all… this book! I had to write about it because I got sucked in and read it in one setting! It is as dark as it comes, but man did the author do an amazing job!
I loved how she stylistically wrote it. I loved the voice that seemed hollow and vacant. I love the freedom the girl found in the end. I loved that this book wasn’t about redemption and it didn’t have a classic happy ending (though I thought it was as happy as it could be under the horrific circumstances.)
Hands down the most thought-provoking book I’ve read in a long time.
Oh, and I’m never letting my kids out of my sight again.
Happy 4th!
I hope everyone had a fantastic 4th of July yesterday!
Mine ended up being two days of festivities and I may or may not have eaten deviled eggs for breakfast #sorrynotsorry
More than all of that, can you believe it’s already July?? Crazy how fast the summer is going!
How to revise with an Edit Letter: Part 3
Are you still with me? Because Part 2 can be pretty brutal if you have an extensive edit on your hands and you may think you’re never going to survive to see the light of Part 3. But you will.
For me, I cut about 10k words and then added back about 5k. I combined chapters, adjusted character motivations and added a few new chapters.
All in all, once I started revising (after all the planning stages), it took me about 8 weeks to finish (I have a full time job and 3 kids though, so that definitely contributed to the time).
So how do you know that you’re finished revising?
Well if you followed the previous steps, you’re going to have all these:
that should now look like this:
I then printed out a fresh copy of my edit letter and went through with a highlighter. Everything that I did already I highlighted in green and everything I still needed to do, I highlighted in yellow. If you your pages are almost entirely filled with green, you’re almost done. If they have a lot of yellow, you still got some work to do!
I had some yellow, so I went back through and fixed it note by note until all my yellow was then scribbled in green. It was quite the colorful few pages!
So you’re done with all your notes!
The first thing you need to do is celebrate because THAT my friend was not easy. It was time consuming and mind bending and there were more times that you thought about setting your manuscript on fire than you would care to admit. I bet the LAST THING you want to do right now is ever look at it again… but guess what? We have a part 4.
Technically part 4 would be to do a read-through from beginning to end, but that doesn’t warrant it’s own post so Part 3 (b) is READ THROUGH YOUR ENTIRE MANUSCRIPT. If you can, print it out again. If you can’t, send it to your e-reader. The whole point is that you’re not allowed to fiddle with it when you read. Just make notes.
Part 3 (c) would be to then implement those notes.
You know what you have now? A pretty solid revised draft. At this point you can either
- Send it straight to your agent/editor
- Send it out to your CPs
If you did some major revisions that affects the majority of your book, I advise if at all possible to send a first revision to your CPs so they can give you some perspective. Your draft you send to your agent/editor will be much stronger because of it. If it’s just a few chapters, just send those few chapters to a CP. The point is that you might think you nailed it, but another perspective might show you have a few more tweaks to go.
Well I hope this helped! Let me know if you have any questions I can answer in more detail.
Life Changes Whether You’re Ready For it or Not
The last few months have gone by in a blur. The same week I became agented, I also accepted a new job position that had me working in an office for the first time in six years (I’ve been working remotely). I’ve really been loving my new job, but the adjustment period has been brutal for my writing life.
I got my edit letter. Mapped out my revision. Then just stopped.Â
I was working a lot of hours trying to adjust to the new job learning curve and when I got home I would just collapse. I’ll tell you how bad it’s been. In the last few months, I’ve only read two books… guys? Did you catch that? psst. this should be your immediate reaction: 
In summary: I had to put my entire writing life on hold the moment I got an agent. WORST TIMING EVER! But it’s real life and sometimes real life timing is complicated.
I tried to rush through a revision after a few months of not being able to work and it was horrible. I was not feeling the creative juices and just thought I could power through it. I didn’t follow my own plan very well and when I did a read through, it was just total crap. I completely lost the voice and pacing of the entire first half of the book. I broke down in tears and emailed my agent.
My supportive agent basically told me to relax and stop forcing myself. So I did. For the first time, I just stopped being stressed about the fact that I wasn’t revising or revising quickly and lo and behold, within a few weeks, my job evened out and I started having the time and the mental capacity to be creative.
I’m making a lot of progress and although my six week revision is now at 12 weeks, I’ve accepted the fact that life changes whether you’re ready for it or not. You can either embrace that change and figure out your new normal, or you can fight that change and beat yourself up about it. The end result is still the same. Change is inevitable.
Here’s to being happy I’ve gotten my groove back!
Now time to conquer the rest of this revision!
Destiny Cole 