I’ve been working on a series of middle grade to young adult novels. They are each about 50,000 words because I do them during NaNoWriMo. After revising the first one four times, it is down to 48,000 words. The first one is nearly ready for submissions.

The Scribe of Irohila

This is a middle grade adventure about a 12-year-old boy, Raoli, who lived in a civilization so ancient, no historical record exists of it on earth. Raoli sees strangers floating downriver near his village, Irohila. He becomes entranced with the idea that his village could benefit from knowing more about where the strangers came from. The novel chronicles his search for the village of the strangers. This novel is currently being revised for the fifth time.

The Seagull Rebellion

A minor character from the first novel takes center stage in The Seagull Rebellion. Maralin, a 13-year-old girl from the inland city of Halekalo, goes with her father to Valeka, a huge city beside the ocean. There her father’s attempts to study wildlife bring on hostilities from a nearby group of primitive villagers, and Maralin’s life is endangered.

The Legend of Kao Pao

Back in Irohila, Raoli, now age 14, is about to participate in a coming-of-age ceremony called Jakata, but he rebels against the tradition of having to announce his choice for a future wife. Meanwhile Irohila has its first visitor from outside the culture, a woman who serves as high-priestess in the Halekalan temple of Kao Pao, a deity whose earthly messenger, Berendi, was born in Irohila three hundred years earlier. The first draft for The Legend of Kao Pao was completed in 2006.

The Valekan Migration

Maralin, now 15, is forced to evacuate along with thousands of other residents of Valeka. She embarks on a journey north along the coastline, and in the process, redefines who she is and what she will become.

Written during NaNoWriMo 2007.

A Moment in Abashoc

To be written in 2008.

I may write more after this; I’ll have to wait to see how the series is received. I like to write using different POV characters to get to know them all better.

Tonight I finished the fourth revision of The Scribe of Irohila, a novel I wrote in 2001. Sorry to say, I feel I must revise it again. It is getting close to completion, but I’ll be checking for a lot of useless words and double checking that all the characters are consistent. I also need to add some descriptions. It seems that a writer’s work is never done! Of course one of these days I’ll have to give it up, send it to publishers, and concentrate on something else, but for now, I’m still sure I’ve got work to do.

For example, the word “just” is practically useless. I scanned the entire manuscript for the word, and found it way too many times. Even though I know it is a useless word that has almost no place in a novel, I’d skipped over it about two dozen times during this last revision. With my scan, I deleted almost every “just” I found, though I kept a few I thought were appropriate.

This time I wrote a summary of each chapter as I read through the manuscript. These summaries are version one of my synopsis. My next project will be to revise the synopsis until it sounds like an exciting novel any agent or editor would love to read more of. I’ll do that and start revision five.

The Scribe of Irohila starts out slow and ends up as an exciting, eventful novel that’s hard to put down. I love the characters and the locations, and everything about this novel. I look forward to the day I feel ready to share it with the world.

I’ve been struggling with revision for years. It used to be so easy - before I was struck with the necessity of getting an entire novel ready for publication. I’ve read so many suggestions. Some go-getters advise only two edits - one for correcting typos and getting rid of excess verbiage, and one for adding details. Others say a novel should be revised ten times or more! What’s a novelist-in-training to do?

It appears that since there are so many methodologies of revision being promoted, we who are writers must go by our own instincts to know when our novels are ready for submission. Personally, I prefer to edit more than just twice. I’m on my fourth revision of The Scribe of Irohila, and this is a major one. I’ve added several scenes. I’ve cut entire paragraphs without regrets. I may try to combine two chapters soon. I’m not sure about that, but I’m considering it, to make the introductory section of the novel move faster. I’ve never done these things before and for me, it has been a nightmare to learn it.

Maybe if I cared less about my novel, it wouldn’t hurt so much. Somehow I’ve picked up the feeling that touching my novel is scary because I might scrap something that should stay. Or keep things that should disappear forever. Either way, it seems that what I’m facing is an irrational fear that I may be incompetent to revise effectively.

The truth is that I’m very competent as an editor. I’ve been working for the last six years as an editor for a small town news business. Yet when it comes to my own novel, I’m having a terrible time getting revisions done. At this point, I’m somewhat desperate. I need to get this project off the ground because I have quite a few other novels begging for my attention.

I believe after the first novel is edited, revised, and done with, it will be easier to do the others. I’m just sorry it took so long to get the first one done. (I wrote it in 2001, in only 17 days!)

I know that the opposite of fear is love, so my plan, to overcome this irrational feeling, is to love my novel into readiness. And that’s realistic. I truly do love The Scribe of Irohila. Every time I read through it, I enjoy it and am pleased that I wrote such an unusual novel for children. But there are so many tiny details that must be coordinated to make the novel work perfectly. I’m probably going to finish this revision soon and find other people to read it through. I need another person’s perspective to let me know if something is missing or out of place.

I’m still working on revisions for my 2001 novel, The Scribe of Irohila - this is the fourth revision - and at the same time I’m writing the synopsis. I’ve been terribly slow at getting this novel ready for publication. I wrote the original manuscript in only 17 days, but getting to the first edit took months because I’d never done it before and because I wanted to give it a rest period before reading it for the first time.

When I get this revision done I’ll be sending copies out to a few people for reading and reviewing. I have a few family members wanting to do this for me, but would like to have some children’s book writers look at it too, so I’m interested in trading book reviews with someone else who has a manuscript revised and ready for a first-reader.

This is a coming-of-age type middle grade novel set in a primitive society; fairly realistic, not much fantasy to it.