When I first decided to do a YA version of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, I was excited. I had so many adorable ideas. I would write the whole thing in a quasi-Austen style. My main characters would all be college students on spring break. And I could do it all in only 50,000 words.
I polished that version, started querying, and then promptly started getting rejected. Apparently, YA cannot have a formal voice, YA characters need to be in high school, and 50,000 is kind of on the low end as far as word counts go.
After several months of getting nowhere with queries and having quite a few fellow writers tell me that I needed to change these basic elements of my story, I finally gave in. I started the process of rewriting the entire thing in the beginning of November. I kept working on it every night up until about ten minutes ago.
Now, I am pleased to say that I actually might have the beginnings of a marketable book. My voice is contemporary. My main character is sixteen. And I increased my word count to almost 69,000 words. Whew...
Oh, and dare I say (for all my belly aching about the changes), the whole is actually kind of better than my original version.
As an added bonus, the fabulous C.A. Marshall is going to look over it for me. I won her free manuscript edit contest a while back because I am apparently the luckiest girl in the world. I just sent it off to her and I'm looking forward to getting her feedback (Not too soon, though. I need some time off).
So, now that I'm done with all that heavy lifting and am about to reenter the editing stage, I'm going to have way more time for blogs. I can't wait to start posting and visiting with everyone again! Honestly, if it wasn't for you guys out there in the blogosphere, I wouldn't have known to make these basic changes! I'm very, very grateful to my writer friends out there who have been so generous with their time and advice.
-- Lisa
PS - Oh, thanks also to the wonderful Melissa Sarno who already gave me some valuable feedback on the first fifty pages. Your comments were so helpful and you hit on so many big issues. I already put in almost all of your suggestions!
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