Writing is such a solitary activity that It's always such a relief and delight to find other writers to connect with.  I'm looking forward to conversing with members of the She Writes community and sharing stories about the drafting, edition, revising process

 I could not have written my first novel without first going for broke int NaNoWriMo 2008, joining tens of thousands of other writers on a mad dash of typing toward that 50,000 word mark.  After that first draft was completed, I spend two years with a half dozen other authors in a read and critique group run by Judy Reeves, working and re-working each chapter  to make every word deserve its spot on the page.

Four years later, I'm still working on that novel.

But this time, Sandra, a wonderful senior editor at NAL Penguin Books  is guiding me through revisions.  Working off her suggestions I spent most of June slicing away a good third off the book, and the 30,000 words that were deleted were replaced with 5,000 better ones.  Along with the 95,000 word/35 chapter document I emailed back to her yesterday  was a chapter outline, color-coded to indicate which chapters happened in California, which took place in Manila and which were new.

She wrote back, delighted with the outline, for she said she'd never worked with such an organized author.  I guess sometimes it pays to be obsessive-compulsive about details.