Late last year, I finished writing a draft of a novel that I am very excited about but kept putting off reading through it for fear it would be terrible and all my excitement was for nothing. On Thursday 6th April 2017, I decided to stop being scared and just do it ... AND IT WAS GOOD! Relieved, I then read through it again and ended up with a TWELVE page list of all the bigger and smaller things that need to change. The bigger issues were mostly parts where I had dropped a load of information just to get it down but now have to find a way for it to be seamlessly added to the book without it becoming more of an encyclopedia than a novel. After reading it again I think it's definitely, structurally at least, pretty spot on - I'm happy with the characters, the story and order of events etc - but I need to concentrate a lot of my energy into the first third of the book which isn't as fully formed as the latter two thirds. The first part is the introduction to the world, the characters and story etc and when a major event changes everything, that is when the book really gets interesting and I want to replicate that in the first bit. Not much has to happen per se, more just working on the way it's written and for it to be compelling enough to make the reader want to carry on reading to the exciting parts. I am also in a fruitless dilemma that I am in love with at least three of the male characters. Bummer. With everything going on with the Lily Divine to Cara Ward name change, I haven't been able to do much more with it than that but the second I have more time, I'M ON IT.
I have talked in the past about wanting to use Twitter more and now, I'm doing just that. I mean, I still don't tweet that much but, very slowly, I'm getting there. At the moment, I'm mostly retweeting anything I like and also interacting more with people I follow as before, I was only observing and not getting involved. Now, I make a point of liking the things I like and commenting on the posts and tweets that inspire me. I also have a new girl crush: Victoria/V.E. Schwab ... I say new but really more of a renewal of love. I already adored her work as a writer but as I didn't use Twitter much before, I wasn't aware of just how fabulous she is as a person. She is so honest and open about life as a writer and never fails to make me feel better and less alone. She also wrote a wonderful blog post that can be found (here).
Before I get onto the steps I've taken to transfer my books and social media etc from Lily Divine to my own name Cara Ward, I also wanted to mention that late last year, after suffering from Trichotillomania and Dermatillomania for more than half my life, I finally found a way of managing both compulsions. Over the weeks where I worked out how to effectively deal with both Trich and Derma, I wrote a diary of my journey which I have decided to self publish. Initially, I posted the diary on my other blog www.cara-pace.com but due to the personal nature of my diary, it felt more appropriate that I self-publish instead. I will be working on that from Monday but if I have time, I'm going to try and read it through before the end of the week
Now onto everything Lily Divine/WEIGHTING TO LIVE related...
After making the decision to change from Lily to Cara, I had to update all my social media accounts which was easy but after that, I decided, if I wanted my books to be the best they can be, I had to read them through again as I think I've developed and matured as a writer since 2015 when I first self-published them. On the whole I was happy with all three books and any changes made to WEIGHTING TO LIVE, CHANGES and SIXTEEN MONTHS were minor. I started working on those edits on Monday 1st May but after I had finished, I decided to read through them again, just to be safe and found a few more little tweaks and changes. My mum also read through them for me, a fresh pair of eyes to potentially spot any mistakes and typos I'd missed.This week, I gave my covers a bit of a makeover (separate post coming very soon) then changed the font and names etc on my book trailers. For relatively small jobs, they took much longer than anticipated. There have also been MANY other jobs along the way that I've had to do but I think you get the gist of what's been going on. I also took author photos on Thursday night and decided on the one I've included in this post (*hiya*) then uploaded the eBooks which have now gone live but as I still need to sort out the paperbacks, I won't be publicising them just yet.
As per, after a pointless vow to keep this short, many words have been written so I will stop there for now and promise to be back soon when all my books are good to go.
Cara x
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