Manuscript is done, now for editing...

It's been quite awhile since I updated the blog. Shame on me!

I didn't drop off the face of the planet, though. I finished the manuscript awhile ago. When I last posted, I was working on synopsis notes. Well, I had it printed out, I reviewed it, even a member of my family went through the manuscript and found more errors to correct.

For the past couple months I've actually been making more progress on the story; I hired a freelance editor, Paula Berinstein from the podcast called The Writing Show, to help me with tuning the storyline and plot points and character arcs. All I can say is that she's shown herself to be worth a LOT more than I paid her.

The beginning of the story has been completely changed to the point where it barely resembles the original opening (and I think it's actually better now.) Right now the work has slowed, slightly, as she's helping me develop mapped out character arcs. That...is...hard. To actually articulate the character arcs and develop them is in no way easy for me. But Paula has been great with helping me understand my weaknesses in this area and helping me find my way through developing this skill a little better. She's been wonderful at mentoring me.

I think my story has an arc for the primary character; the problem is that the secondary (and tertiary) characters have latent character arcs that we're trying to enhance. In the process it should make the story better in the long run.

This manuscript may never sell. The sad fact is that most manuscripts from first-time authors probably do not sell; but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I of course hope that an agent will take an interest in the manuscript while I acknowledge that the odds are against me, and from there a publisher may take an interest. What I can say is that after Paula and I put it through the ringer it will at least boost the odds a few percentage points than if I didn't have her helping me.

All I can do now is continue working on the manuscript with Paula and see what the finished product emerges!

Still Plugging Away

Okay, things have slowed down a bit. Part of it is because I'm going over the manuscript for what seems like the fifth time, even though I know this is actually the third time for me.

I'm working on synopsis notes. According to the "traditional wisdom" (meaning: information I can glean on what you're supposed to do to try getting science fiction published) you write the manuscript, polish it up a bit, then create a synopsis and a query letter then shop it to agents who in turn will try selling it to a publisher. After the couple years pass that this process takes...assuming you find someone willing to take a chance on you...you get an advance check that might cover a dinner at Red Lobster.

I'm working on the synopsis part. Specifically I'm working on the synopsis notes; a long distance friend advised me that I'll want to create several versions of the synopsis with varying lengths. I sat down and thought about it; the best way for me to do this is to create an overall summary of the manuscript, broken down by "chapter," from which to derive synopsis sheets. Once all of that is finished I could write an agent query since the query will require what is essentially the manuscript squeezed into a couple paragraphs (and this is a 390 page manuscript already...how do I squeeze everything down to less than a page!?)

Thankfully the notes are going really fast. I've caught a couple more typos along the way and made quick fixes to them as I see them. Just goes to show that no matter what there will be mistakes that slip by not once, not twice, but three times, with two sets of eyes reviewing it.

I'm also looking at printing a copy of the manuscript for someone who said he'd be a beta reader. I don't know how receptive I'll be to making huge changes unless he finds something really horribly off; then again, if something really doesn't work then I'll have to do what I have to (by the time he's done with it I may already be querying. With any luck.) I got a quote from FedEx Kinko's. Forty bucks. Ouch!

Then again it would be something to just have that manuscript, even in it's rough, possibly never publishable form, in my hands as a physical thing. It would be a way of saying that I accomplished something, that my year of work wasn't a total waste.

I might do this just for that feeling alone. That I accomplished something. I see a therapist for the issues I encounter dealing with life in my post-surgical state (insurance requirement, ironically). He said that just writing a novel length manuscript is quite an achievement that I should be proud of. Part of me wants to believe that. The other part says the proof is in an advance check. Otherwise this was little more than an exercise in trying to write but ending up wasting a year of time.

Much of this is my own confidence issues. I try to keep expectations realistic, and sometimes the pendulum swings a little farther into the "you're wasting your time" side of the equation. That's when the optimistic side reminds me that my end goal...of querying and getting those rejections...is the point I've been aiming for all along, and good or not, anyone can achieve the point of querying and getting rejected. I can do that. I'll just secretly hope that someone eventually doesn't reject it, and in the meantime, once I reach the querying point, this manuscript is getting set aside and I'll start working on the next story idea. And repeat the steps again, hoping this time it will sell.

I'm now on page 354 of 390 in the manuscript and my notes are 16 pages long. Considering that I'm just summarizing each chapter section and my notes are 16 pages so far I am hoping that this is a good sign that I can create a 2- to 5-page synopsis and maybe that one pager isn't quite so left field of realistic. Doing the math shows that so far I'm compressing an average of 22 pages to 1 page, approximately, just doing an off-the-cuff summary? Not too bad.

At this rate I'm hoping to have the notes done tomorrow or Tuesday. I slacked off over the weekend; I would have had it done today if I did what I was supposed to do. Whoops.

Manuscript UPDATE!

Oh geez where do I begin? On August 1st, I finished my first round of edits on the manuscript!

My wife has the last pages now, and she's working on her editing for grammar, clarity, etc. etc...

Once she is done with that, I'll be printing up a copy or two and have a first reader lined up to go through it and give an opinion. I'm psyched!

I hate saying that because someone may read it just before acting as a  first reader and be afraid to give honest feedback if it's negative. But that's okay! I'm psyched because for every person who has written a first draft of a novel, there are ten that sit on their butts and say they want to write a book or novel, but never get around to doing it. By getting not only that first draft done in something like six months but also finishing a round of editing and polishing, I'm ahead of the game. This alone was an accomplishment for me!

I fully expect this to not sell. I'm going to try to shop it, and I'll be disappointed if it doesn't get accepted. But it's a first effort. First novels are hard to sell, new authors are hard to sell, and overall, the realistic picture is never good. It's hard out there! But I still came out ahead, and that's what I'm proud of.

If someone does like the story then it's icing on the cake! I actually wrote a manuscript and made it through a round of editing!

Once my wife is finished with her edits I can give a final word count...now is one of those hard times, waiting for someone else to get time set aside to finish working on it...waiting is never easy.

A manuscript goal

My new stated goal-I'm approaching a year since I started writing my manuscript. I went back and sifted through old entries on this blog to determine my "start date", and it turns out all I said was that I started it after submitting some contest entries to The Writing Show. I was pretty sure I had started writing the manuscript at the end of August, beginning of September; the vague wording of my blog entry seems to support this. My new goal is to finish my pass of editing the manuscript by the end of August.

If my wife finishes the batch of pages she currently has in her possession and then finishes my final set before September 1st...I can mark September as the time to begin working on my query letter and whatever other material may be needed for querying agents.

I then plan on getting a lot of rejections, feeling sorry for myself, and figuring out what I have to do to tweak the story and see if it can be salvaged to the point of submitting again to other agents until maybe...just maybe...it'll be accepted for representation, then hoping like crazy that it sells and brings in a paycheck.

That's the dream, anyway.

Wish me luck!

If the Editor Edits, Is This Still Mine?

My first attempt at writing a novel is slowly taking shape. I wrote the first draft, then went back to start cleaning it up.

I'm catching a lot of little bits here and there; there are missing quotation marks, missing words here and there, and places where the wording was so awkward it makes a baby's first steps look graceful by comparison. So I cut and trim and alter things as I can.

My wife is far more trained in the art of utilizing the English language. As I moved through my manuscript, I would bundle up a batch of pages I went through (say, 50 pages at a time) and send them to her for editing. Essentially the story is getting a light touch-up by me then a heavier edit by her in one pass...I edit edit edit, then send it to her and when she's done I re-integrate her changes into the master manuscript.

But this got me thinking...is the story still mine?

I think it's a ridiculous thought. I mean, the story itself is still mine. I came up with it. She's not adding characters or changing events (yet...I am waiting for her to start suggesting things that work or don't work and I'm hoping it'll help improve the story.)

Still; there was always this little fantasy that I would be able to sit down and create a great story that would be well received as it is. I could write it out, edit it, and not rely on the crutch of a third-party to alter this and fix that and...essentially, by the time I saw the story or work in print, I'd read it and not find a spot where I'm scratching my head wondering why a particular passage didn't seem familiar. "I don't remember writing that," I think to myself.

I go back to my manuscript and reread the section. "That's because I didn't write that..."

Is the story still mine?

Perhaps the idea of a great story that sells is kind of a fiction in itself. From what I can tell from reading various blogs and stories on the publishing industry, unless you're Stephen King you probably won't have the clout to make the story 100% yours. If you're fortunate enough to have your manuscript picked up by an agent who then finds a publishing house willing to sell your story, you're going to have copy editors, editors, your agent, etc. all having a hand in shaping the story.

You as the author create a framework and most of the meat for the book. Then you're going to have a lot of surgeons using their plastic surgery techniques to enhance your book for marketability. There will be tweaks to layout, certain wording, etc. until they think it's ready to sell. So again...the end result is a story that should be close to what the author wrote, but not exactly what they turned in.

At least, that's my impression. Maybe someday I'll find out.

Manuscript Progress

Me oh my. It looks like quite a bit of time has passed since I posted an update!

Well, there's a reason for that. I've been working on the manuscript.

My last post had me halfway through the first draft with editing with a few chapters sent to a friend to read. I have mixed news on that front; the friend never asked for more pages to read. But she's busy and there wasn't really any expectation for her to have time to read it, so I'm not upset.

This post finds me nearly finished with the first pass of the manuscript. The first draft had 112,240 words; at the moment it has 96,958 words, and I'm making steady progress to the end. OpenOffice tells me that I'm on page 366 of 402, and as I cut words the page count goes down (duh) so the end is a moving target. This does mean that I have less than 40 pages to go before hitting "the end" again!

The important thing is that I fit some time in every day to review and cut. I may not be making huge leaps and bounds every day, but I do try to get at least a third of a page reviewed. I squeeze it in whenever I have some time; before bed, after work, half an hour to an hour over the weekend days. And every paragraph I review is one more paragraph down, one more paragraph closer to being able to sit down and work on another story!

Soon I hope to be able to sit down and start compiling a list of things needed to try shopping it around. I can't say I'm confident that it will find representation, but I do feel it's getting near a point where I need to try. If I wait too long or keep polishing polishing polishing, I'll never get around to trying to sell it, and never slapping a "good enough" label on it to shop it around is about as good as not writing it at all.

Small Edit: The online friend I was referring to above emailed me to ask me not to read into her not asking for more of the manuscript to read; I replied to her (and hope that it's not stuck in her spam filter! Hopefully she'll see this edit and know to look for it!) to let her know that I was just putting that note in the blog entry just to follow up on the previous entry I had. I am in no way offended! I should do an entry on my philosophy of paying dues in trying to get published as an author.

To be honest, I've been neglecting the blog in large part because I've been spending more spare time playing with the manuscript and life activities; the blog would look very boring if I just kept entering counts every day so I was waiting to reach more of a milestone to report. However, I noticed that quite a bit of time had passed since my last entry and while I was chipping away at the manuscript and making progress, it was taking a lot of time to reach that milestone. So I put this entry in.

I fully understand that my friend has been busy; she's had a lot on her plate, and that's just with the things I knew were going on in her life! So I am in no way offended or reading into her not asking for follow up pages. I just wanted her to know that and I in no way intended for her to be hurt or offended by the quick mention in the blog entry here! (Believe me...if I were, I'd say so. I have a tendency to be...blunt?...with my thoughts. The closest I get to subtlety is masking names in the blog entries because I want to maintain some semblance of anonymity in my activities and privacy of others being discussed.)

Edit Edit Edit Edit

I don't dedicate hours a day to editing my first draft. I work on it on and off, in small, digestible chunks. And so far I am proud to say that I'm past the halfway point. Not by leaps and bounds, but significantly past the midway point.

Yay, me!

I just noticed I hadn't updated the blog in awhile and thought I'd add this quick update to show that I haven't quit. Nope, not by a long shot.

I even had an Internet friend ask about reading the story. She had previewed the first chapter (well, what kind of passed for a first chapter), and despite her busy schedule said she'd like to see more. So I packed up the bit that was once-overed by both myself and my wife, converted it to PDF (thank you OpenOffice...) and emailed it to her.

She's a busy woman and she said she couldn't guarantee that she'd get through it soon and that's fine. As far as I am concerned she's reading it for entertainment. Inwardly I'm thinking that if she starts reading it and enjoys it to the endpoint and asks for more of the story, then it is on the right track. That's what a story is supposed to do and that's what you to do get an agent or publisher interested; they pick up the story and you hook them right off the bat, leading them with a finger through the nose from plot point to plot point, and when nature calls they agonize over the decision of whether to wet themselves or finish just one more paragraph.

If she likes it and wants more, I'm on the right track.

If I bore her, then something's not working.

Maybe she'll ask for more, maybe not. Whatever happens I hope she enjoys it as a halfway decent time-killing story.

In the meantime I should be getting back to my editing...

Update on Novel Progress

Wow, it's been awhile since I posted!

Have no fear...I haven't given up, both people who read this blog!

I'm still editing the story. I'm nearly halfway through the current incarnation of the story, and slowly making my way through a turning point.

There have been some setbacks due to personal issues in life taking up my time and energy, so things have slowed a little. But every little bit of progress is progress nonetheless. I have to keep believing that.

In other news, I submitted the opening of the story to a podcast that selected it as one of the manuscripts to review for criticism on their next release coming out this weekend.

To say I'm nervous is a bit of an understatement. The only thing keeping me from obsessing about it are the previously mentioned personal issues. I am hoping the hosts have found some positive points to the story but I know that no story is perfect and I have little doubt there is plenty that can be cleaned up.

That's a nice way of saying that while I don't expect them to love it, I hope they at least like it (or some of it) but I fully expect some need for a thick skin after I get the nerve to listen to the podcast. This was my first attempt at writing a novel-length story. People rarely do well with their first foray into a new skill, and this podcast will no doubt reinforce that lesson!

How's That Editing Thing Coming Along?

Believe it or not I've not abandoned it. I'm past the 1/4 of the novel mark and rapidly heading into the halfway point.

I've been making some changes to my workflow that slowed me down a little...namely the Users Must Hate Me blog talks about the particular changes, so I won't belabor them here.

I'll just say that I have my backups in place again, I have my new writing platform ready to go, and now I'm going to be digging back in to work on the novel! Wish me luck!

The Writing Show Podcast Feed

There was a recent show that I really enjoyed listening to, regarding the recent melee between Amazon and MacMillan. The Writing Show has great resources for authors and wanna-be authors! Check out this show and let me know if you enjoyed it the way I liked it...