Writing/editing update for August

Writing/editing this novel has been the biggest challenge ever for me. I feel like I'm learning so much, though. How to use words other than "was," how to make a plot central and focused, etc.

I've written books before this one, but they were practice and I don't plan on releasing them, but The Unraveler is the first I want to actually turn a profit on. The history of this book is long. I remember telling my friends about the idea of it while camping, many years ago. I didn’t have the skill to write it, then. What it turned into is crazy weird and fun. It’s basically if the Halloween season got blended into a novel. BTW, the attached picture is a creature from my novel (which I drew).

Each full edit feels like I've turned it into a whole new book. Just this last edit has had me cut 10,000 words and adding a new chapter. I plan on having a new draft done by my birthday, and I hope to be completely finished editing it by Christmas. So many people have helped me with feedback. Friends, one complete stranger I met online (she writes fantastic novels, btw). I’m so thankful. It’s weird to think about, but the first person to ever read my novel died a year ago.

I'm also working on other writing projects. I’m working on other novels, mostly in planning/experimental stages. A book about an anonymous Internet threat, a book about a famous punk rock band with supernatural elements (titled: Pixelic), and then the sequels to The Unraveler. I’ll likely be focused on sequels until the series is done, but my plans for other novels need the time to simmer, anyway.

I’ve done some short story writing, too. I had been thinking about Batman’s waterfall that he drives into to park the Batmobile. In modern times, there’d be no way for Batman to escape surveillance. So, I’m working on a story about how fly-over imaging tech would catch superheroes. I also wrotethis Harry Potter fan fic. I felt a little lame writing fan fiction, but the idea screamed at me to write it. I thought about the idea for months and months, and I couldn’t ignore it. It’s set before the Prisoner of Azkaban, and I’m pretty proud of how it turned out! It’s got a ton of views from Reddit. I also recently posted a poem that I wrote a few years back. It’s about the feeling of being so emotionally dumbfounded that you can barely stand up. I should also mention that I’ve been writing monthly posts on four different blogs. Oxyborb.com is about nerd culture, Harrisonaye.com is about writing.

Art is life, man.

Kudanites and an update

I did some sketches of creatures that appears in my novel:

kudanites

I had to share them because they turned out so well! 

So, work is still ongoing on my novel. I wrote something very complex, and I have spent much of my time making the cogs fit. My world is giant, so I'm being very careful with its development. I want this world to maintain more than just one book, one story... I want to create a playground that I can return to again and again. I want sound logic in how the weird stuff works.

Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario and many Nintendo games once said, “A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.” 

I vowed from the beginning to take all the time I'd need. I thought I'd be done by the end of June. I now hope to be done by the end of the year. I guess the biggest non-writing setback I had was an unexpected promotion at my job. I took on more responsibilities, so I was forced to give up much of my non-work time to get work done. That promotion got easier recently, so my burdens are less. 

I have done something well: every day I've set a timer and completed a certain amount of time editing. So, it's moving.

The last thing I want to mention is that my friend passed away. We went through college together, and often talked books and writing. This is relevant to my novel because he was one of the first people to read over my rough draft and give me feedback, and his input was invaluable. It's gotten me down, but I read over the notes he sent me and it felt like he was speaking to me, alive again. I suppose he does live in my novel, at least a little.

Have a good 4th of July, everyone.

Reading and Editing in 2015

This past month, my life has been turning pages and scratching out words. A big author posted a critique-friend-connection to her blog, and I found a few people to swap writing projects with. One of those turned out to be a good match, and so I read and gave feedback on her entire novel. That was probably the most enjoyable thing I did this past month. I really love critiquing books, and it’s so much more fun when the book is already quite good. I’ll pimp out that book and author here when she releases it, but I don’t want to say anything now for privacy reasons. 

After that, I reread A Storm of Swords, my favorite of the A Song Of Ice And Fireseries, and then I went to the book store and shuffled through a mountain of paper. Truth is, my favorite type of book is 3^rd person, past tense. It’s getting harder and harder to find new books in that style. I try to read YA books often, since that’s what I want to write, but I get so tired of 1^stperson being used over and over that it’s hard to find anything to want to jump into.

What I ended up reading next was a random pick: Half A King by Joe Abercrombie. I had never heard of him or this book before going into the book store. I judge buying random books on if the title sounds interesting and if the first page grabs me. This book did, so I bolted through it in a few days. It was a good read. Fun. Well-written. Fast-paced. I read it because the book I wrote is about a prince, and I wondered what other authors do differently.

Now I’m reading Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang at the suggestion of the person whose book I just gave feedback on. I just finished the first story last night, and it might be the best short story I’ve read since I, Robot. I’m not usually a fan of short stories, but this was very weird and interesting.

I leave a book at work to read during lunch hours, and that one is currently The Scorch Trials, which is the sequel to The Maze Runner. TMR was a very good book, which I flew through, but I got immediately hesitant to continue with TST because I hate it when characters go through an entire book’s worth of torture only to gain more torture immediately in the sequel. I first got The Scorch Trials right after finishing The Maze Runner, but I only read the first few chapters before needing a break. I like my characters to find a little relief between books. After battling grievers, I felt like the characters deserved a year to enjoy life. I don’t know. I set the book down for 5 months, and I’m just now considering finishing it. I had the same problem with The Hunger Games. I hated the idea of Katniss going through a second game. I never thought that the first book needed a sequel. I thought it was perfect as it was.

So, other than that, I’ve been editing The Unraveler using feedback I’ve been given. I know it has to be perfect when I submit it to have any shot, so I’m taking my time with it. I’ve got other books in the process of writing, but I won’t be focusing on them until I get this one done. The others are great, though! I’m excited!

Project Update - #Unraveler #Pixelic and more

Today I completed another major round of editing on my primary writing project, The Unraveler. I’m telling you, it feels good, man. My original goal for having my novel sending-out-to-agents-ready was my birthday (September 25th), but I think I’m going to push that back until spring. 

halloween nears!

For those who haven’t studied the business of writing/selling fiction books, the basics (for an unpublished writer like me) are like this:

1. Write the book
2. Edit the book to absolute perfection
3. Write a query letter that shows how awesome/marketable your book is
4. Send said query letter to an agent
5-. If the agent rejects you, move on to the next
5+. If the accepts you, then the agent will attempt to sell your book to the various publishers
6. If the publisher accepts, then woo-hoo, you’re going to be published

Step 7 and on is marketing and etc, etc. It might even be the biggest/most complicated part of the whole thing, but that’s not what this blog post is about.

I’m on step 2 & 3, and I’ve been there for a while. I’ve been polishing my book to an insane degree, and I’ve spent more time on the editing than I did on writing the book.

The reason is that you cannot send a query letter about the same book to the same agent twice. So, if my book is littered with problems and grammatical errors, then my ship has sunk if I mail out my query letter too early.

So, I’ve been editing, editing, editing…

long past the point where my friends & family who have read it have told me that they think it’s already perfect. Honestly, it wasn’t and isn’t, but I can now say that it’s getting close. I might do a few more read-throughs before feeling OK to send it out, but all the major issues my book had have been fixed. I’ve spent years cutting out the fatty, boring parts and enhancing the awesome. I’ve spent so much time just considering plot loopholes and character perspective and all that jazz, but it’s nearly there.

and the rest of my projects

But I want to have a career in writing; not just be a one-book-wonder. So, while I’m editing The Unraveler, I’ve also created a potential series plan, wrote the first 3 chapters of book 2, and I’m ramping up a second book series called Pixelicand planning out a one-off novel (codenamed  Project HIM). I’m also writing a bunch of short stories and poems that I wish to submit to magazines soon. But that’s not all.

I’m working on a marketing plan for myself (so when I do talk to agents/publishers, I won’t feel completely ignorant), a synopsis of my book, a career path (so I can see the direction I want to take), reading books on book selling/writing as an industry, and I’m creating the foundations for a successful social media world. That, and I’m still working on making my query letter explain in so few words why I believe my book will sell. 

It’s a lot of work. 

Oh, yeah, and I have a fulltime job. lol

I haven’t made much time for friends lately, and for that I’m sorry. I’m basically in a mad drive to get my book completed, at this point. Deadlines are insanely important to me, and I don’t want to be working on The Unraveler forever (but I also won’t quit until it’s truly perfect).

In unrelated news, 

I’ve started reading The Unwanteds: Island of Legends and also I’ve begun Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series. Something light and fun and something deep and adult. They are a surprisingly good combination of books to read at once. Oh well, that’s my update.

Thank you to everyone who has and continues to support me in my crazed ambitions. I hope I make it all worthwhile, someday.

Writer's block, taking breaks, skipping over parts, working on something else, and other methods to run away when faced by a challenge

I am not a professional writer yet, so maybe my advice is not the first place to stop on your research. That said, I want to talk about what happens when the going gets tough, and how I see other writers handle challenges in writing and editing. I like to join writer discussion groups on facebook. I like to participate in sharing thoughts about how a writer can act to be successful.

Lately, the topic has been what to do when you’ve hit writer’s block or what to do when editing has you hung up.

I always see the same responses to these problems. They go something like this:

Take a break from it.
Skip over it and come back.
Work on something else.

I just want to say that I think that this is all awful advice. When you’re faced with a challenge, your first instinct should not be to run away from it.

so many writers

…never finish their manuscripts. So many would-be writers never even finish chapter one. They claim that they have writer’s block. They claim that they just cannot think it through, when I believe the truth is usually that they just don’t want to think it through. They don’t want to put in the work, the effort.

There’s a difference between planning a break between large projects and taking a break because you’ve hit a giant challenge. I always take breaks between finishing, drafts, and major goal points like that. Usually my breaks are about a week-long. But, when I have a major challenge in front of me, that is NO time for a break. That is a time to work.

time doesn’t heal plot

They say a couple should never go to bed angry, well I say don’t let your biggest challenges sleep. Challenges do not suddenly get easier over time. However, they will make you more reluctant to return if you try and hide from them. Facing your challenges doesn’t necessarily mean working on your keyboard, either. Get in bed, turn off the lights, and just think. Thinking about how to confront a challenge is working on that challenge. It feels like a break, because thinking is peaceful, but it will get you through it before running away from it will.

Truly, though, taking a break usually just gives you an excuse not to work. You’ll push it back, push it back, until your novel is just another thing on your bucket list that you’ll never complete.

skip it, skip it

Some say to skip over it and work on the next part. While I agree that this is better than running away from it, I still think that this is problematic. When you don’t face the challenge before you, it will keep on haunting you as you go. This is the snowball effect. Sometimes an issue left alone will only cause you to create more issues down the line… which will give you more to have to go back and fix… which will only make the work more overwhelming… which will only make you more reluctant to finishing your project.

Think about your job. Say your boss gives you what feels like an impossible task to do in an impossible time, don’t you usually find a way to make it work anyway? That’s why bosses do that: You’ll make it work somehow. Make your challenge work. Don’t give yourself excuses.

Chapter one is easy

Some say work on a different project, but I say that this only leads to a great deal of unfinished projects. Most writers have a stack of chapter ones from a billion different book ideas they have, but the difference is that professional writers actually finish stuff. If you start a project that you fully intend to finish, then finish it. Don’t start a million other projects, because then you’ll never get one finished. Chapter one is easy; Chapter eighteen is hard because it requires you have to completed chapters 1-17. Most people who wish that they were writers never get past the first few chapters. Most writers who wish that they were published never get through editing. Be one of the few.

Haha! Sorry I don’t sugarcoat this stuff, I’m just not a believer in writer’s block. I feel like writer’s block is an excuse to quit working through the hard parts.

April showers, bring many days to sit inside and write.

I’ve been feeling really good lately. I just finished my fourth “draft.” I use the word with quotes because I’m a new writer and I’m perhaps using it differently from the industry standard. My drafts are the points at which it feels like my work has leveled up. Usually, I say it’s a new draft when I’ve completed working through the book of notes I’ve taken for my upcoming edits.

Anyway, I flew through editing. I mean, I spent hundreds of hours, but they were hundreds of hours of pure fun. I love this stuff.

Next week is spring break in the schools, and, as a teacher, I am lucky enough to get the week off. I’m planning on spending my vacation from work working on my new book, the one I’m not editing. I’m really excited to work on it more, as I’ve also put down about 15k words on it. My finished novel is soaring at the 100,000-word mark. I’d love to cut that down to 95k, but every time I cut out something, I find something else to add. That’s probably a bad practice, haha.

But, that’s my life. Teaching and writing. I’m very happy about where I’m at.

Well, that’s all I really wanted to say. I haven’t blogged as much because I’ve been spending every ounce of my free time writing and editing. Anyway, keep it up! Stay positive and rock on!

Editing Wind

I have been working really, really hard on my novel.

The past few months have been all about world building. Figuring out how society works in my work. Ironing out ancient history. I challenged myself to name all of the year’s holidays in my world. I listed what musical instruments there are. Who the top famous 5 living and top 5 dead musicians are. I knitted my giant family tree together. For each of the major cities in my world, I created an emblem like the ones showing on this post.

turning of the tide

But that was all the last two months, this month has been about working the prose. I’ve been line editing. Fat cutting. Rewording. Man, it feels good to know how much my book has progressed. I think I’ve been supercharged creatively because I’m about to start a new job. It makes me feel awesome to know that I have my money-needs covered now, and I can start rocking my writing without feeling the need to spend most of my day looking for work.

Then the other day I got feedback, and it gave my already high-paced wind an extra boost. Feedback is a writer’s Christmas. The best thing you can give a writer, truly. Feedback makes you feel like your endeavors aren’t completely lonely ones. It makes you think about your own work in new ways. It’s exciting. Useful beyond measure.

old copy

The one weird thing about feedback with a novel-length work, especially for an insane worker like me, is that you often have created several new drafts before any feedback is returned to you. I really don’t want to annoy my friends by sending them new drafts all the time. I don’t want to be pushy, because reading a draft of a book is a lot harder than reading a final product. Looking through notes on an old draft can really make you embarrassed. So many more mistakes, many ones you’ve already corrected. Plot holes you’ve already filled in. Questions the reader has, already answered in the new draft. The book I have now is so much better than the one I first put an ending to.

That said, feedback is so incredibly invaluable, but I also completely understand that work goes into reading, too. My friends who have sent me feedback are so incredibly kind for doing so. Thank you times a thousand. To my friends who haven’t sent me feedback, no worries, you’re still awesome too (but if anyone happens to want to read my novel, email me to get the latest draft!). Honestly, just to allow me to vent to others about writing is so good for me and helps me in other ways than editing. My friends are awesome.

Looking ahead

I feel like I have about 2-3 more read-throughs before I will claim that it is ready to submit to agents, but I’m so excited. Allow me to daydream a bit: Wouldn’t it be great to get published? Not only that, but to be able to claim that writing is my profession? I would put out a new book every year if I had all the time in the world to write. I know I would, and they’d be awesome books, too. I have so many awesome ideas. The Unravel is just one (which has true series potential).

Trimming Down Your Novel, Promotional Spam, and Making ALL the Things... my Accountabiliblog Holiday Spectacular

Thanksgiving is over, so I’m going on a diet. Literarily speaking, that is.

Cutting the fat

a new selfie, showing off my awesome holiday hat

For the month that ends the year, it has begun with destroying a beginning. Namely, the beginning of my novel… and I haven’t destroyed it as much as made it freaking awesome. My goal in life is to make a novel so good that it would be impossible not to publish. No, really. OK, momentary sidetrack:

Lately, I’ve been joining a bunch of random online groups for writing. It’s been my desire to find some magical perfect person to become my critique partner in crime. Someone who takes writing as seriously as I do. Someone that lives nearby. Someone with a willingness to edit and be edited…

SPAM MACHINE, ENGAGE!

But all these online writing groups seem to be nothing more than promotional vomit for self-publish authors (*and I’m not talking about the good ones, see below). My facebook feed has recently been bloated with a billion authors who post “Please, PLEASE, PLEEEEEAAAASE buy this” twice a day, usually to each of the ten groups I’ve recently joined. It’s spam. This blog once made a fantastic term for what these people are wishing will happen when they post spammy links to Amazon: a book-sales button. It’s like they think that if they just spam enough, people will buy the book. 

Think I’m exaggerating? Look at the screen capture on the side of this paragraph. It was my facebook newsfeed. This is real, only edited to delete the dude’s identification, and, you know what? It was only as much as would fit on my screen. I had about twelve posts from him on my newsfeed, all in a row. This guy posted like 10 times a day, spamming his books (I had to block him), but it wasn't just him. It's a ton of others. Spammers. Throwing links out onto writer's groups as if they'll find the secret magic to sales.

The formula:
Post spam on random facebook group
???
Profit

But that’s not how that works! Social media needs to be about making connections with other people. You know, being social. The best authors can get me to buy their book, based solely on the personalities they present through social media. Well, who’s going to fall in love with the personality of a telemarketer? Nobody! Spam is not going to work! Build real, personal connections, not a list of people blocking you!

Forget the Twitter Numbers!

For a while I thought it was all about trying to get a certain number of Twitter followers by Tuesday, but I had an epiphany: Quality is better than quantity. Why would I follow a thousand FollowBack spam accounts? To get my numbers up? Pish! I would take a hundred people who are actually interested in The Unraveler (and willing to recommend it to friends) over a thousand spam accounts following me (who don’t care whatsoever, except that you’re following back).

When my book gets published, then I’ll get followers the natural way. From people who actually care about what I have to say because they’ve read my novel and want to know more.   

Make it shimmer

So, I went off on that sidetrack because so many of these self-publish spammers have had, “Free, limited download offer” as promotion to their book. Just to see what these sorts of books were like, I downloaded a bunch. I read bits and pieces, but I realized something: Many of them had spelling errors on the first page. Many were formatted strangely. Many were littered with very simple problems that would have been caught if it were edited. So many of these authors claimed to be “fed up” with querying, and so decided to self-publish.

And that brings me back to my philosophy: When I finally decide to submit my novel to agents, I want my manuscript to be as near ready-for-print as possible. I think that’s the dedication it takes to find success. So many authors want it all now, like Veruca Salt. They think they’ve gotten the golden egg, but it melts in theirs hands. I guess what I mean is that they don’t put in that extra effort.

*I don’t mean to sound arrogant (that sentence always sounds arrogant, haha). I completely respect self-published types, and I’m not talking about all of them. I’m saying that there are those who just want to turn text directly into profit. Those that don’t take the time to make a product that is worth purchasing. If you write a poem on Saturday, don’t sell it on Sunday. Iron that thing out! Make it snappy. Fix the simple spelling errors. Use quotation marks for dialogue. Those sorts of things. Don’t blame the agents for hating your work if you’re not willing to make your work shine!

Novel trimming

That said, I’ve returned to the beginning. This must be the twelfth time I’ve read my novel in full. I think, with my last draft completed, my structure is refined. My characters are individuals. My plot is perfected. So, this new draft is going to be about cutting the fat. I feel like I was better about this as I wrote, so working through my first chapter has been a fun challenge. I’ve been tearing out hundreds of words from it. Oiling the transitions. Making sure that the excitement builds from the get-go. Making my writing snappy yet flowing. Removing any data dumping or details that are irrelevant to the plot.

And it’s been good. Really good. I’ve never been more confident in my beginning. I look at it and see intriguing part after intriguing part, with no fat in between (and it wasn’t always this way). It’s hard to cut the fatty parts you love. Little details that are unneeded yet loved. Breaks your heart, but breaking it is the only way to heal. Haha. It’s been extremely hard work. 

Side Projects. I do them

Beyond that, with all my friends in town for Christmas (that’s how the Midwest works, everyone goes away and comes back for the holidays), I’ve been shooting YouTube videos on the side. 

my stop-motion puppet, Woolo the Walker

I’m actually writing a movie script, which I hope to film this month. I also plan on doing some stop-motion animation and make some new music videos! Doing other things helps me be refreshed enough to continue the editing, so it’s great! Over New Years, I’m going to be traveling to DC for MAGfest, which I’m really excited about. I have so much going on, it’s great. I love keeping busy.

Anyway, you’re great. Really. If you’ve read to this point, consider me your number-one fan. Please, since you’ve cared so much about me, leave a comment and tell me about you! I would love to see who is reading this and check out your projects or blogs (or, if you’re in St. Louis-area, I still have open roles for my movie, you should join up).

That’s all for now! Keep being awesome!