9. Six weeks. Two hours a day. One book.

I was locked and loaded. I had the feedback, I had a reenergized direction, and it was finally time to seriously consider that this book was going to be published one day. The grind begins!

For six straight weeks, I spent at least two hours nearly every... single... day rewriting Aether Guardian. I wish I was exaggerating, but I'm not. Starting on April 25th of 2025 to June 2nd, my life was going to work, coming home and working on the book. Weekends - working on the book. Now I did have a hard cut off that I couldn't spend the entire evening working on the draft. I made sure to make dinner, do some chores, and spend time with Jordyn each and every night. On the days that I didn't work on it, I let my mind and body rest. However, I wanted to make sure that I made up for that time, so on Friday's and Saturday's I would spend from about 10am-4/5pm working on it. So I might have went a day or two not editing, but then spend double time on the days that I didn't have work.

It was long, but man it was worth it. I finally ironed out all of the little (and sometimes big) details of the story that had been nagging at me for years: The first third of the book feeling like a completely different story writing style; adjusting the lack of world building with the economy and socio-political dynamics that were missing; smoothing out my overall writing style; trimming the word count from about 110k down to about 89k and making it clean, concise, and punchier.

Line by line, and paragraph by paragraph, I essentially rephrased or rewrote very large chunks of the book to better fit what I saw in my head. The plot stayed pretty much the same, but it was easier to chew and digest. I wanted to make it more accessible for everyone and keep the reader engaged.

I also tracked my progress. I always included the day that I worked on it, the chapter and page number I started and stopped, what the new page numbers are, a start and stop quote/line so I could find my place, as well as a total word count. It kinda looked like this:

         5-2-25

Ch 4 pgs 69-83 (Now 69-78)

   Start: A sharp knock startled Cecilia awake. “Guh!” she gasped, jolting upright. She rubbed her face hard trying to force herself awake.

End: Don’t back down, she ordered herself. I won’t let them win. Not today. Facing the entrance of the shop, Cecilia trudged inside.

Word Count:

Start: 104787

End: 103551

Eight pages of this in my tracking document. You see how I cut about five pages of material just in this one section going from 69-83 pages down to 69-78 pages? It was trimming a lot of fat and cleaning everything up. And it's not that it was difficult, it's just that it took a LOT of time. I knew what I needed to change, I knew how I wanted it to sound. It was just a lot of finding the right order and way of writing the exact words that took the greatest effort.

But boy by the time I reached the end, I was so happy with what came out of it. I finally felt at peace. I took the advice of the ARC readers, I adjusted a lot of material, filled in key plot holes, answered nagging questions, and brought it all together. I was finally happy with it.

And I was tired! I'll tell you more next week, but I didn't touch this project for nearly three full weeks. I was happy, but I needed rest. I needed it because once I gave the final version to the editor, I knew that another long grind was waiting right around the corner.

It was time to get things started.