After receiving critiques on my query letter I realized a lot of downfalls with how I was approaching my novel. Fortunately I made the decision to follow the advice I found on the internet and I can already tell it's paying off.
First I cut my novel in half. I had too many characters that I wanted to show off. Instead I decided to write two separate novels that run in the same timeline and have overlapping scenes told from different points of view.
Second, I tossed out all of the parts that were no longer relevant or simply did not push the story along. This was really hard to do. In my opinion some of the best parts were in the sections that got thrown away, but it was in the best interest of the novel and therefore it had to happen.
The result has been phenomenal and I don't even have one complete chapter done yet, just bits and pieces of chapters that got all jumbled around in the "cleaning" process. Even though I completely rearranged the entire novel, it will be better for it. I believe it was Stephen King who said, "The first million words are just practice." I've put in at least a quarter of that and I'm seeing how true it is. Every time I go back through there's always something to improve upon. I'm actually really excited to be starting back at square one. Now I can implement everything I've learned up to this point in the entire novel without getting stuck on not wanting to change a good thing because it's done, even though it could become a better thing.
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