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She thought her grief was over and done with...
Tessa Wellen's beloved horse, Jigsaw, died last year in the fall. By now, she thinks she's done grieving. That is, until a stunning gray horse named Challenger arrives. His striking resemblance to Jigsaw causes her to resent him, despite the fact he is supposed to be a well trained horse.
But Challenger may not be all he seems...
And Tessa may be forced to reckon with more than just her dislike of him.
(Note: the above book cover image is the current Wattpad cover for this book, which is available in first draft form on Wattpad.)
Now, it’s been awhile since I’ve updated exactly what’s going on with this book. My Wattpad followers have known that I’m planning on publishing it, and a few other people have as well, but here’s a summary for those of you who don’t.
A Challenge is an equestrian fiction story focusing on a grieving girl named Tessa Wellen and a quirky gray gelding named Challenger. I started the project in 2020 and finished it in 2021, now hopefully I’m going to publish it in 2022.
I say ‘hopefully’ for a reason. Originally, I was planning on publishing at the end of 2021, but life got in the way. Then I was planning on early 2022, but again, things didn’t go as planned.
When I started out editing A Challenge, I added a couple of new scenes, but not many. I was basically just editing over the script I had already written out.
But then I stopped in the middle of edits and backed all the way up. I rewrote almost the entire manuscript, most of it is now fresh first draft material with no editing having been done to it.
I did this for two reasons.
#1. The story was just simply not what I wanted. I knew it had more potential within it, but I couldn’t bring that out by just editing over the manuscript I already had. I didn’t want to publish that, when all the while I knew something better could have come of it.
#2. This is a more minor reason, but still an important one. The ‘voice’, the ‘feel’, of the story had been sucked out of it in the editing. Tessa no longer had a distinct character or voice. In my effort to make the manuscript ‘perfect’, somehow I’d taken her out of it.
In other words, I just wasn’t satisfied. And so, I put publishing plans on hold, backed up, and rewrote pretty much 3/4th’s of it.
And guys, I’m very glad I did. As I just went through and basically made a whole new fresh draft, new ideas and themes came out that are going to be just what I want! The story will be so much better just because I went back and rewrote it.
So, if you’re struggling with your story right now, if you’re thinking about publishing but it’s just not quite right, then don’t. Don’t publish until you’re sure that is what you want the story to be. It’s perfectly okay to go back and redo it, or rewrite it. Take the time you need. If that time’s a month or a year, take it, because it isn’t worth it to put out a story you are not satisfied with.
Until the next update,
Abby