I finished my first draft of Looking for Home at some point between Thanksgiving and December 1, 2024 (I went back and looked), After January 1, I reread it and did a revision. In February 2025 I sent to beta readers, then a line editor worked it over, and then I swapped work with another professional writer, and she made some very good notes.
All of that feedback needed to be factored in and folded into the narrative, straightening out the chronology and cleaning up finer plot points. As well as cutting the wordcount down a bit. And today I restyled the first few paragraphs to clean up the last of those wordcount cuts, and I am DONE with Looking for Home, and I think it’s ready to query!
It has been quite the journey. I was not as driven writing this book, and it took twice as long to complete. I froze up on the regular, wondering how I could pull such a feat off again. I fought through the grief of losing my mom and quitting my job. And these last couple of weeks, the revisions just seemed too overwhelming to take on.
My writing buddy Shannon told me, “Just work on one page. That’s all. Then try to revise another page tomorrow.”
That did the trick. I got my confidence back, and it was off to the races. I just finished writing the last revised paragraph a few hours ago.
Next is drawing up the first list of publishers to query and seeing what happens!
But that will be tomorrow. Today I will celebrate that Carlton and Merrilyn and Cassie got their happy ending. As they should have. Stay tuned!
Julie Liddell Whitehead 