How The Hidden Amethyst came to be (The book).

When I found out I was going to get to publish a book, I was super-excited. At first I was planning a picture book, but as time went on, I decided I was better at novels. I selected a story and began to edit it.

But as I continued the story, I began realizing the story wasn’t good for a novel. It was only probably sixty pages, and I couldn’t get the plot right. So I sadly left the idea and started searching my story drafts for another idea.

Before long I had a list of a couple story ideas. I read my drafts I had and then reread them. After a little bit I decided on a unfinished story I had started about a few months before called Eliza and the White Ring. It was about a girl named Eliza who had to find a magic ring. Sound familiar? It’s the story I’m using now except I changed a lot, including names. I sometimes look back at that draft and I can hardly tell it’s the same story!

I started the editing by starting a new draft and rewriting the story all the way through. I did a lot of editing on that one but it wasn’t much different from the first draft. I look back on that one and you can’t tell at all it’s the same story, except for the fact there’s a magic ring in both! The story was too short when I finished it, so I started another draft and started rewriting and editing again. I changed many names in this one, but not all of them---I think I changed maybe five. I finished this new copy with about one hundred ninety-eight pages. And I liked it. The names were nice and the story was good, so I set the draft aside and waited.

However, about a month later, I looked back over the copy, and I thought: I can do a much better job than this!

So I started a fourth draft. I changed all the names and I worked for a month or two on repairing the plot and making it better. I added characters and deleted characters. Most of the rewriting was copying and pasting good paragraphs from the third copy but a lot was also total rewritings. It took me a few months but then finally, finally, I finished my final copy with two hundred ten pages. (Note: In the book, the font size is smaller, so there’s only around one hundred ninety pages. But that doesn’t mean the story got shorter.) 

Then my parents and I started editing it. We did a lot of editing and we found mistakes---parts that didn’t make sense or didn’t seem realistic, and we made sure everything flowed correctly. And then finally we finished it. To make sure everything sounded right, we read through it one more time. Then we started all the formatting and the getting all the details set with CreateSpace.

I can not believe how much has changed since my first draft! I can’t wait for you all to see it!