“Editing sucks,” I said everyday for the past three months.

I wrote “White Hell” for my graduate thesis. Unfortunately, my thesis adviser was not invested in my success, so I floundered with the final execution. In my final weeks, I got the opportunity to work with Diana Pharaoh Francis, which changed the direction of the novel in one conversation.

Discovering a story or developing a character aren’t a problem for me. My writing struggle is in the outline and editing. How do I ramp up the tension?

Using a tool like The Hero’s Journey or Save the Cat Writes a Novel has been incredibly useful. But I view it as an editing tool.

Save the Cat helps provide the framework around which I tell a story, like a the frame of house. I’ve started working on a new novel and struggled within the first 5k words. I turned to this book for some guidance on building my hero.

This $13 Kindle book has been worth more than most of my MFA classes.

#savethecat #writertool #writerlife #editingsucks #nanowrimofail #mfagrad