To Write or to Rewrite- A Ramble

What do you all think of my new summer theme? Also, stay tuned till the end of the post for a super special announcement.

Today, since I didn't have any post planned, I decided to discuss A Time of Trepidation, Pirates, and Lost Princesses.

Pictures via Pinterest

More specifically my infamous reason to take my already published book and rewrite it.

That's right guys. You're finally getting the dirt on the decision to rewrite A Time of Trepidation, Pirates, and Lost Princesses.

I've explained it before, but I don't think that I've ever given the full explanation for it. And that explanation actually starts with book 3 A Season of Subterfuge, Courtiers, and War Councils as well as book 1 A Week of Werewolves, Faeries, and Fancy Dresses.

That's right. The decision to rewrite A Time of Trepidation, Pirates, and Lost Princesses never actually had anything to do with that book at all. It was always about the other books in the series.

I published A Time of Trepidation (as I am now going to refer to it because the full title is too long to endlessly type) in the fall of 2016. That was after two torturous years spent trying to write it (to be fair though, that first year was spent primarily editing Week of Werewolves). Y'all don't want to know how many times I nearly gave up on that book, but in the summer of 2016 I wrote The End. It was done. Or so I thought.

The way that I ended Time of Trepidation was... problematic at best. Oh, it's seemed like a good idea at the time. But then I tried to write the beginning of Season of Subterfuge and I realized that I was S.T.U.C.K. You do not want to even know how many hours I spent trying to work on that beginning (I'll give you an estimate though and it was about five months). I even came up with the perfect new ending, too little too late. The book was already published. Finally I got past that horrible beginning, and even though I wasn't satisfied I moved on and started working on the rest of my book, determined to fix it up later. As I did so, I realized that this beginning was completely and utterly unnecessary to the rest of the plot, but what was a girl to do except for plow on? Even though, I hated the ending/beginning of these two books, they were both written. So I kept writing, only to realize just how much of trouble I was in.

The trouble however, had nothing to do with Time of Trepidation and everything to do with A Week of Werewolves.

When I wrote the first book, I had no idea what was going on. I'll admit to you that I didn't even know what the quest Chelsea, Easton, Clint, and Bobby were supposed to accomplish was. I was just as clueless as they were. As I was writing Time of Trepidation, the pieces started falling into place, I finally figured out what the quest was, but I still only really had an idea of the overall plot. As I was working on the third book, the whole idea for the series finally came to me. And I realized that the first book did not actually fit into that grand scheme of the plot.

Now mind you, I'm talking about the first version of Week of Werewolves. Many of you might remember when I first started out on Goodreads, I was working on rewriting Week of Werewolves. This was before you had read any of my books at all. The new version is 370-something pages. The first version of Week of Werewolves was 260 pages of poorly written plot-less horror.

It had to be rewritten, because otherwise it didn't fit with the rest of the series. Plus, I had written some things that made my writing of Season of Subterfuge, extremely difficult. I spent a lot of time laboring over changes that I could make, and how different I should make my book. I eventually asked God and His reply was "don't change everything" with that in my mind I started working on piecing back together the first book converting some scenes and rewriting others. I figured for the second book, I would just tie in a few plot points and change that dratted ending and then I would be done. Back to Season of Subterfuge in no time!

Haha. Haha.

Rewriting A Week of Werewolves, was a lot harder than I'd originally thought it would be. I don't even want to get into all of the plot holes I had to fill and the dues ex machinas that I had to murder, every word basically had to be changed even if I kept to the idea behind it. Anyway, instead of reliving the pain, I'm just going to share two little snippets, one from the original version and one from the new rewritten version and let you see for yourself the difference. I was trying to pick an excerpt from the middle of the book but everything that I read embarrassed me too much so I just decided to put down the opening paragraphs of both of them and close my old documents so that I can finally be done with that torture.

"The day had started so normally.

Shame.

I wouldn’t be so disappointed about the fate of my normal day except that this is an absolutely, horrible way to ruin a normal day. There should be laws made against poor, innocent fifteen year-olds getting their days ruined in such a way. In fact, if I survive this whole ordeal, I will write a letter to Congress. The letter would express the dire need of such a law, and how fifteen year-olds everywhere would be indebted to them if they did in fact write it."

(2015)

"For me, normal died on Tuesday.

I'm still mourning it."

(2017)

*shudders* Hopefully, you all see the improvement. Fifteen year old me certainly had a penchant to ramble (and you know that's serious coming from me, the Queen of Rambling). If you'll also notice, the first excerpt is actually in past tense. That's right, I originally wrote my books in past tense. I'm not exactly sure why I chose to change everything to present tense. I was rereading The Hunger Games at the time, and I guess that I just found that tense to be sharper and clearer?

Also, even though it isn't shown in this excerpt, fifteen year old me thought that it would be a good idea to have all of the adults in Amar speak in a barely recognizable archaic dialogue complete with every single variant of the word 'you' being replaced by 'thees' 'thous' and 'thys'. Let me tell you, it was a pain. Slightly traumatic too. I switched to an ESV Bible after that instead of the King James Version.

So anyway, as I was working on rewriting Week of Werewolves, the list of changes that I had to make to Time of Trepidation kept growing. What went from just rewriting the ending and those blasted 'thees' and 'thous', changed to converting all the past tense verbs to present tense verbs. On top of all that, originally all of my alternate POV's for anyone other than Chelsea were in third person. But since third person present doesn't sound that great (imo) I changed it all to first person, so that would have to be done to Time of Trepidation as well...

Then my characters started changing too and I realized some flaws in Time of Trepidation. Some things didn't fit in with what I changed in Week of Werewolves... Before I knew it, I had to rewrite the whole book.

Apparently since I'm a glutton for punishment, I'll share one last "before and after" pair of snippets. This time from A Time of Trepidation, so that hopefully you will see how important it was for me to rewrite this book.

"“Easton-” I began again, but was cut off by Bobby letting out a little cry bellow me. “CJ,” she whimpered. “Help, I'm slipping.”

I paused and glanced back at her hanging on for dear life. Then I turned to Easton who was still completely under the spell of the mermaid's song. I was torn. How could I choose between which of my friends to save?

Then Easton made my choice for me. He simply took a step forward where there was nothing but air and pitched forward.

“Easton, no!” I screamed."

(2016)

"“Chelsea,” Bobby whimpers. “Help me. Please, I don’t want to die.”

The problem is, Easton does.

What if I can only save one?

I turn back to her, and clutch my head. This can’t be happening. Please. I can’t be forced to choose, because there isn’t a right choice. I can’t let either of them die. I can’t lose either of them.

But Easton doesn’t seem to care. He smiles at me. A cold, ruthless smile.

“Easton, no!” I scream, lunging toward him.

Just as he steps forward into the empty air."

(2019)

In case you also didn't notice, I changed Chelsea's nickname from the original CJ to Chels. So many tiny little changes. Those tiny changes are the ones that get you, mark my words.

Oh well, all is well that ends well and I see the end in sight. Hopefully I will finally get these rewrites done and actually be able to publish this book again this summer.

Anyway, onto the exciting news I told you. And it is this: HAVOK HAS ACCEPTED ONE OF MY SHORT STORIES!!!

It's called The Losing Game and I won't say much about it, but it does have quite a bit Greek mythology. It will be live on July 12th so be sure to mark you calendars!