How I’m Doing on Against All Odds–4

Time for a monthly update on how I’m doing with my WIP, Against All Odds, Book 3 of the Crossroads trilogy.

Based on a true story, the extraordinary saga of hardship, conflict, family, and survival…

A quick summary:

What should have been their new home became a battle to survive. A million years of evolution made Xhosa tough but tough enough for this?

Here’s what I have done the past month:

• I change my tagline–again. I still don’t know if I like it but I’m going to have to settle. I need to order the book cover.
• I spent most of the month wordsmithing–moving words around, replacing some, unreplacing others. When I do this, I search common words (like so, mostly, often, have, was, is, he) that I am likely to overuse on early drafts. For example, I did a Word Find on ‘-ing’ and got 2500+ hits (in 330 pages–that’s extreme!). One page looked like this (the yellow highlights are the -ing words):

By the time I finished, I’d gotten it to this–just two -ings:

Of course, that doesn’t mean some won’t come back when I do a full re-read of the book the first, second, or third time. Or fourth.

• Still haven’t contacted my cover folks but soon. OK, I said that last month but this time, I’m going to do it!
• Ideas for Book 2 and 3 in Dawn of Humanity keep bouncing around in my brain. I’m keeping track of them on a Google Keep note that keeps getting longer and longer. I’m thinking of talking with a writing coach to lay out both books. I have a few names…
• I’m also getting ideas for a sequel to Crossroads. I hadn’t planned on a sequel trilogy–three and done was what I intended–but my characters have different ideas. Those too I’m tracking with Google Keep.
• I do like organizing my random writing thoughts in Google Keep. They’re a long bulleted list (text and images–even videos) that I can move around and/or copy into the mss as needed. Here’s an example of that:

• I’m entering one of my prehistoric fiction novels in Writer’s Digest contest for Indies. If you haven’t looked at this contest, click the link. It’s under $100 to enter and has some nice prizes.

• I am pondering a switch from MailChimp because it’s gotten so darn expensive. It offers way too many tools I don’t use and get charged for. D.E. Haggerty has a post discussing her switch from MailChimp to MailerLite. Great detail and re-ignited my thinking on this.
• Still planning to do Diana Peach’s PowerPoint book trailer idea but for the entire trilogy. I’ll release it when Book 3 is ready as background on Book 1 and 2 and to encourage readers to buy the early ones if they haven’t. I’ve also seen this done using the free Canva.

How are you doing on your latest WIP? I’d love to hear!

#amwriting #indieauthor

More on How I’m Doing

How I’m Doing on Against All Odds–3

How I’m Doing on Against All Odds–2

How I’m doing on Book 3 of my trilogy

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Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy, the Rowe-Delamagente thrillers, and the Man vs. Nature saga. She is also the author/editor of over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, adjunct professor of technology in education, an Amazon Vine Voice,  a columnist for NEA Today, and a freelance journalist. Look for her next prehistoric fiction, Against All Odds, Fall 2020. You can find her tech ed books at her publisher’s website, Structured Learning