Erin Lodes

John – and everyone else who’s reading this — please know the title is definitely written dripping with sarcasm. I love my writing coach.

The final part of finishing my novel was a final round of revisions. This round involved John, my wonderful writing coach, pushing me to justify sentences, paragraphs, scenes, and metaphors — especially metaphors. I am an absolute fiend for metaphors, sometimes — possibly often — to my story’s detriment.

So I revised.

We argued sometimes over bits here and there and we’re both stubborn people so it would get fairly heated. My husband would often ask us what we were shouting about when I came out my office after a coaching session. And sometimes I won. But mostly he did.

It. Was. Grueling. I hated writing. I hated my book. I hated John. I hated myself.

And also I didn’t. Because we were making my book better. But sometimes I was so sick of revising that I never wanted to look at my book again. And that is still partially true. But I love my book now. The voice is clearer, the writing is crisper, the story is cleaner. And I became a better writer because of it.

I learned how to better say what I want to say. I learned how to whittle down the mass of words I’ve spiraled onto the page into something that will make sense to other people. I learned how to force myself to figure out what I am really trying to say, rather than just circling around the edges of it.

Well, I’m trying anyway. I am still a work in progress. Heavy emphasis on the progress.

Next: I finish this fucking thing.

How I Finished My Novel is going to be an ongoing blog series detailing how I finish this freaking thing. I know, I know, you could probably tell that from the title… I’m being helped along on this journey by John Adamus, who is amazing and you’ll hear a lot about him in this blog series.

If you haven’t already, check out Part One and start from the beginning.