Friday, 14 December 2012

GUEST POST - J.D. WATTS



    For the better part of the last month, my house has been literally turned inside out…well at least my bedroom has. I’ve spent the last three and a half weeks sleeping in the family room where my bed is taking up residence while my bedroom and master bathroom were almost completely gutted. It was supposed to be done by Thanksgiving, but my daughter got chicken pox, which caused some labor problems as most of the contractor’s employees had not ever been exposed to the disease before. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, though, as I was just told the last few things and the carpet will be completed Monday and then I’ll be able to begin the process of moving back into my sleeping quarters.
   This process has been a struggle, but I’m so happy with the new look of the bedroom. It’s amazing how a total makeover can make you go from embarrassed of a room in your home to proud and excited to show it off. It’s sort of the same way when you are writing a novel. Your first draft is comfy and familiar and you think you’re happy with it until you reach the editing process. It’s okay for the first few chapters and then you start to hate all of the disruption that the reconstruction and alterations bring. There are times you really wish you hadn’t even messed with it, despite knowing it will look and feel so much better once you’re done. Then you reach the end of the process and you read the final draft and you sigh and are like, “Wow, this is so much better!” Yes, you still worry that your visitors might hate the color you chose for the walls or the plot twists you chose for your characters, but in the end, it’s your baby and you are the one that has to live with the final results. This is definitely how I feel about the Children of Creation series, and Maelstrom in particular. It’s been an amazing journey. Sometimes it was fun, sometimes it was painful, and others it was just plain annoying, but in the end, I will never regret the process of publishing these novels and I’m so grateful to the people that helped make that happen.

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