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...

Editing Fun and Projects

I cannot claim to be a successful writer. Not in good conscience, anyway. I know that Mur Lafferty advised that a writer is someone who writes, and I'm trying to fill those shoes, but there's a part of me that wants define a writer as someone who writes and has an audience, preferably paid, as a form of validation of success. It's a tangible way to say, "Look! I've made it!"

But I think I'm getting some clue of what it is like for new writers to try to balance practical life with writing life.

I have a day job. Not one that I've been really loving lately, but it pays the mortgage. I've been spending spare time working on the novel I wrote. The first draft ended at 112,240 words. I'm going back through it and trimming material out; as of this moment, OpenOffice is saying that my novel is 108,023 words, so between my wife and I we've cut 4,217 words, and I'm only about a quarter of the way through the manuscript.

(What can I say? Paula B. was right...it takes a lot longer than we think to get through these things!)

The problem I've had lately is that I'm not spending discrete blocks of time working on the novel. While writing it, I would sit for an hour here, an hour there, and have a word count goal of 500 words at least per sitting (usually hitting 1,000 to 2,000). With editing it doesn't work like that (although I could do it in blocks, I just don't). I don't have a concrete goal each session, and setting one like "work until I chop out 500 words" would be silly, as it kind of imposes an arbitrary limitation on the work. I should be trying to edit to make it sound better and not edit just to cut things out ("I like this scene, but I really need to get to bed..." )

The other problem is that I look at my Writers Block Notebook my wife gave me for Xmas and I feel a pang to work on those ideas for stories. I already told myself I can't work on two of these at once...I simply can't keep splitting time up more and manage to get this done in a decent amount of time. I want (need) to get one ready for submissions and rejections before moving on to something else. That was kind of the reason for the notebook; a place to put ideas so I'd have a back burner to refer to.

But there's an allure to the idea of moving on to the next idea. What if this one tanks? What if this one sucks?! Then I'll have something that could possibly be better ready to go sooner!

And I have no illusions that this first story is great. I really think that it needs some feedback and work. That's part of the reason I'm giving it a once-over, and my wife is giving a second-over to it. A different set of eyes catches things that I don't. And she kind of does this sort of thing for a living since she has an English degree, so I'm confident in her abilities.

I am pulled to try another story and see how it goes. But each time I stop myself. "Get back to what you promised yourself you'd work on," I tell myself. "Fun stuff later. You need to re-read the work you already did."

"But I'm a worse editor than I am a writer!" I whine.

"Doesn't matter. You'll only get better, even if it's just a tiny bit better, if you try it again. Now, EDIT!" says my brain.

I frown, I pout, I procrastinate, but I open the word processor and have at it again.

I'm slowly going through the manuscript. I keep the more fun projects on the back burner, and as ideas come to me I write them down. Occasionally I remind myself that working on a new story is a reward for finishing the editing task at hand first...

Update on Progress; Where Have I Been?

Oh, dear, it has been a long time, hasn't it?

The truth is that I've simply been very busy. I don't have many readers to my blog, so I shifted my priorities. Why? Because I needed to focus on my story!

I've had other private things going on to deal with as well, such as a car accident that totaled my car and subsequently wrangling a new car; it happens to be a Toyota. If you have seen the news lately you know how these things are working out for me in general...

At any rate, the first draft was finished, and currently is having a first-pass to clean it up. Right now the manuscript, which started at 112,240 words, is now at 108,481 words, for a cut of 3,759 words, and I'm still in the first half of the document.

As I hack and slash and reword I then divvy up some of the work I've reviewed to English-major wife, who in turn hacks and slashes and rewords and sends it back to me to re-integrate to the manuscript.

So I haven't disappeared. I'm simply keeping busy doing what I should be doing. Writing!

New Novel Progress: Heading into the New Year

It's been awhile since I updated this blog. It's not for lack of writing, though. I even managed to update my other blogs periodically. Primarily I hadn't updated here because I was working on the first draft.

My previous goal was to finish before December so I could have a quick editing pass completed before New Year's. That goal was missed by  a month. I managed to actually "complete" the first draft within hours of midnight on December 31st, so I managed to complete my first draft of  a novel in the twilight of the year 2009.

What did I end up with? A manuscript with (according to OpenOffice) a word count of 112,240 words, which isn't bad when you consider that fantasy/science fiction is supposed to be approximately 100,000 words.

The story needs a lot of work. There are plenty of places to tweak and bend, and I said I "completed" the draft because I'm not entirely sure I like the ending; it may need heavy rewriting before it's something I like personally. After I have a quick and dirty chop session I plan on having a beta reader with far more of a clue about grammar read through it and give a brutal set of suggestions of what to alter and rewrite.

I've worked hard on it, but I also work to not become so attached to my baby that I'm unwilling to chop out what needs to be chopped out to make a story that other people would enjoy. I wrote a story that I enjoyed, and even then I enjoyed it as I went along writing it. I haven't re-read it to see if I can enjoy it without having to work on it along the way yet (and no doubt spend much of that cringing while wondering what I was thinking when I wrote XYZ).

It's a first attempt. It's rough. It may not be something usable, but if there's a nugget of usable story then I'd like to salvage it. My wife pointed out that in saying things like this it sounds like I'm fishing for compliments; I'm actually trying to work against that. I have read many many accounts of people who are afraid to give criticism because authors aren't looking for creative criticism as much as they are praise.

I don't want artificial praise. If you like it, let me know, that's fine. But I want the rough parts to be sanded away, and parts that need fixing to be fixed. I can't try to sell this without having something that someone besides me enjoys, and glaring mistakes or issues should be smoothed out before that. I need my beta readers to know that I want honest feedback. There may be things I disagree with but for the most part I want to know about what others think does and doesn't work in the story.

But this is going off topic. The point is that as things go, I have a skeleton of a story, and I managed to complete it just shy of 2010. Now I want to spend the next couple months with editing and polishing a bit. Then comes the fun part...collecting rejection slips!

On the other hand while shopping for additions to the rejection slip pile maybe I'll start a new story...but that's getting ahead of myself. With luck, maybe I'll have an update soon on the status of my editing work.

Researching Your Writing

"Write what you know."

I thought this was an interesting bit of wisdom in the writing community. "Write what you know." Think about it for a bit.

I understand the thinking. How can you write about life in a jail if you haven't been in jail? How can you relate to a person who has had bariatric surgery without being a bariatric patient?

At the same time, I think this would make for some boring stories, too. Does this mean that a male writer can't have a female protagonist (or what does it mean if he does and does it well)? What about science fiction, where I really doubt that most writers of sci fi have actually been on a starship?

I bring this up because my story's "new ending" had taken a turn for a real-life town that I haven't been to. I've been to the state it's in, but not that specific town (that's like comparing a backwoods home in the mountains of New York to downtown...New York, I suppose). I can relate only to some aspects of the area in that I've experienced the climate and some of the differences someone from the northeastern states feels in a wildly different part of the country...put it that way.

But that means that I'm incorporating details that are real without ever being there. I've been trying to get as much as I can through researching the towns. Fortunately I live in the age of the Internet; there are videos of the town online, Google Earth helps me with directions and lay of the land, and there are some pictures and images through Google Image search. It's really helped with details of things like mileage, road descriptions, and even the description of a parking lot.

I still can't help but wish that I could actually visit the site and incorporate those experiences into the story. But then again, leaving it somewhat vague keeps from bogging readers down in details that are unnecessary.

The only other solution would be to make up details and create my own places much like Springfield for the Simpsons or Silent Hill being based on Centralia, PA. I don't like that as much. Speaking as someone who went to visit Centralia after finding out some of the background of Silent Hill, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, despite finding just about nothing there if for no other reason than enjoying the, "I was there!" experience when I see it in the news or on TV. There's an almost visceral connection to a place like that, a place that you hear about or interact with virtually then experience in real life. It's similar to the thrill of participating in discussions and interacting with your favorite podcast hosts, making them more real and you feel less disconnected when they say your name and know that this faceless voice is speaking to you.

That's part of the reason I incorporated this particular location into the story. Even if it never sells, never gets published, I know that if I wanted to (if this is the ending I actually keep, that is) I could go visit these places. I could interact with them, and know that out there this place exists, hopefully as I describe them.

Does anyone else out there write like this? Or do I have the wrong idea, and should I just stick to those things that I have more direct experience with?

Knowing When It's Just Not Working

I recently cut about 15,000 words from my first draft. I was working on the scenes leading to the climax ending and I realized that it was getting harder and harder to make progress on the story.

I realized that the story was straying too far from plausibility, which is really saying something for a science fiction story. It was becoming a chore because I was trying to steer it back "on track", and I didn't like where it was going.

At some point I just decided that it wasn't going to work. There was no saving it, and I didn't feel like waiting until I was editing it to rewrite that whole section of work. So I chopped it off and started again, proposing a "what if?" scenario to steer the ending into a new direction.

Does this violate my rule about not editing while writing? I don't think so. I believe it's foolish to keep plodding forward on a plot that just isn't working; I'm using my enthusiasm for the story as it unfolds as a gauge to how well (or poorly) the story is going. This wasn't a matter of tweaking some wording or adding some choice adjectives. It was a matter of seeing that the storyline was going way off script, and fixing it by cutting off the bad part and starting over a from a few steps back.

Doing this threw me off a little, of course, since I'm wwinding back and forward to spare a section of story that did still fit while figuring out what details I thought I had and now don't. It would also be silly to have a character or detail reappear after never being introduced because I used my delete key overzealously.

Anyone else have to cut out large sections of a story to re-steer it into a better direction? I'd have a hard time believing it is that rare of an occurrence!

Details: How Much is Too Much?

TMI. Too much information. Too little information?

How much detail should you include in your descriptions used in your story?

Part of this is, no doubt, a part of your personal voice and style. As with so many things in writing, there doesn't seem to be a clear-cut rule except when it comes to extremes.

For example, you probably wouldn't want to read a story that consisted of paragraphs sounding like, "Bill got in his car and drove to the store. He picked up groceries. He then left the store and got into an accident. He was depressed."

On the other hand, I'd grow bored reading something that sounded a lot more like, "Bill, dressed in his pleated khaki pants and favorite leather belt and his oversized button up shirt coupled with a satin red tie, ran in long elegant strides to his blue 2005 Honda with a smatter of filth on the windshield and worn windshield wipers. He pushed the unlock button on the black keyfob and the locked clicked open with a musical chirp in the key of F. Bill lifted the handle and swung his size 38 rear end into the well worn leather seat, inserted the key into the starter and turned it one-quarter turn for the three seconds necessary to allow the engine to catch. He paused and listened to the sputter of the spark plugs igniting the fuel mixture in his 98,000 mile-worn engine..." At this rate, somewhere in chapter seven he might be finally able to purchase his groceries and I'll be slogging through his pondering of monosodium glutamate.

I've found one author who advises new authors to be more sparse in their descriptions. I wish I still had the link to the author that I read this from; he basically said that when you don't fill in the blanks for every detail, the reader will automatically impose his or her own ideas to fill in the story, and make the story more their own. Describe the bare minimum detail about the heroine; if her breast size and fingernail length aren't important to the story, don't discuss it. The reader will not miss anything you don't describe, and the only things they need to know are things that pertain to the character as an intrinsic detail and things that pertain to the plot or distinguishes the character from other characters.

In other words...less is more.

Perhaps this is a lot of "duh" for other people. The way I'm wired, I need to consciously remember this detail when going through the work. As I rework my story, I'll be asking myself, "Is this important for the reader? Is this a detail that can be omitted without harming the story? If so, it gets chopped.

From what I can tell (and from stories I typically enjoy) the story should flow from point to point without meandering side trips into details that are mundane or have nothing to do with the story. Unless something is going to happen because of that detail, do I really need to know that your hero had a broken wrist when he was seven or is a huge fan of Applebee's riblets? Don't get me mired in background. Get me entrenched in the story, because the story is the thing!

Maybe other people have other viewpoints or insights on this. If so I'd love to hear from you. My first draft is coming along; I'm wrapping up the ending, then I'll give it a quick once-over rough rough edit and then read it to see if there's something resembling a decent story woven into whatever makes it to the page at that point. I'll be reading it with an eye on details that aren't really needed, and for spots that could use some better details and information. I'll be looking for a story that makes me want to keep reading; the less of a chore it is to review, the better I'll hope the story is.

If you're an author or have experience in writing I'd love to know what you think of the amount of details necessary to a make a compelling story. Please share!

Writing Rules I Live (Or At Least Write) By

I've not compiled this in a single post anywhere to my recollection, so I thought I'd put this down now for others.

First, some obligatory disclaimers. I'm an aspiring author. I have not been officially published. I have had an essay or two published in a collection, but I don't really count that since I wasn't paid for the work and the publication itself struck me as being vanity-published more than anything else; it was framed as a contest, winners were published, and on reflection they're getting content with little to nothing for the author outside of ego stroking. I count that as vanity publishing. Maybe others would have other opinions on that.

Second disclaimer: I'm a firm believer that there is no single how-to in publishing or writing novels. If there were a set of rules that you could check off in over to achieve a lucrative career in publishing your novels, I'm sure it would have already been published as a how-to book and there would be no need for people to call themselves wanna-be writers. They'd just follow the steps and collect checks.

So with that in mind, I'll tell you my current "rules to writing," in no particular order, I am currently following to create a manuscript.

Rule One: sit your behind in front of a keyboard and type. Very important step. A writer is a writer because he or she writes. Dreaming of writing makes you a wanna-be writer. I've graduated from wanna-be writer to wanna-be published author. Why? Because I'm writing.

Rule Two: write consistently to achieve a set goal. By goal, I mean a daily word count. I inevitably have some days where I don't make my count. Things happen. Life happens. Things get in the way. I have a family that needs attention as well as a day job. Sometimes that word count just ain't gonna happen. But these are rare days. Usually once every two weeks or so by my reckoning. My initial goal was 500 words a day. I've since found that I tend to get a little over a thousand words down in an hour under the right conditions, so I usually manage to get that thousand words down, far exceeding my goal. I've had several days where I managed to get 1,500 to 2,000 words.

Rule Three: I'm allowed to suck. I totally stole that from Mur Lafferty. But I need it. It gave me the permission to overlook my insecurities about writing in order to find the courage to follow my first rule...sit down and write. It ties to the next rule...

Rule Four: You can't edit a blank page. I think I heard this somewhere but I don't know the attribution. The words, however, stuck in my head. Crap or not, you can't polish the story unless you have the story down first to edit. And as it turns out, yes, you can polish a turd. I remember this episode of Mythbusters whenever I doubt that my story is good enough to keep working on.

Rule Five: If the doubt tells you to quit altogether, ignore it. Doubts are cheap, and they're found in swarms, especially if you feel you need validation in doing something new with little experience or education in the field of writing. There are always reasons to quit. I need just a few good reasons to keep going.

Rule Six: Carve some time to yourself for writing. I try to work by myself for an hour a day. I hide in the bedroom with a laptop. I make sure I take my lunch hour and type away at the desk. I've taken my laptop with me to Barnes and Noble to sit in their comfy chair with a lapdesk (I happen to have one our B&N no longer sells so I can kind of "prove" I'm not pilfering it from their sales displays) and just type away. I needed to find an environment in which I can half-focus on my story with minimal distraction.

Rule Seven: No editing. I backspace and fix obvious spelling errors. I will fix things that just bug me as they're on the virtual page. But I do not go back and rewrite scenes and pages of work. If I do that, I'll end up spending days, or weeks, or even months trying to get a "perfect opening" or making the entire novel a masterpiece magnum opus. The idea is to get a story out there on the page that can be fixed as needed, then shop it around to agents. Editing can be done after the initial draft is complete. I keep getting a strong urge to rewrite the opening and every time I end up reminding myself of this rule! It can be hard to see obvious blemishes in your baby and have to wait until later to fix them, but the danger of getting "stuck" in fixing the story and never actually finishing the story is way too big for me to hazard this road.

Rule Eight: Tell the story. Grammar, structure, etc...those can be fixed later (see Rule Seven). The important thing is to have a story! Tell your story. The mechanics can be revisited later. The story is the thing. The story is the thing. The story is the thing!

Rule Nine: Keep notes. I don't keep copious notes, but I do keep enough to go back and spruce certain things up. I keep notes on full names of characters as I introduce them in the story (you don't want to change a character midway through because you forgot if you used Matthew or Mathew as the given name...makes search and replace more difficult as well.) If you add a particular plot point or device in the story, you probably don't want to forget about it. In my case I'm keeping a text file with my notes in the same folder as the file containing the story.

Rule Ten: Make backups. I'll wager most writers now are using those new-fangled computers on which to write. Computers fail. Hardware is stolen, damaged, or data gets corrupted. Do yourself a favor and get a USB flash drive. Edit your work, and immediately save it elsewhere. Personally I have my notes and current draft on my main computer and on a USB drive, and the version on the computer gets backed up to three external hard drives. If my house burns down I may lose the draft, but I still am protected against most failures of hardware and most incidences of corruption. If you're laboring over a 100,000 page manuscript plus notes plus editing time...isn't the investment in some external storage for copying your work periodically really just a drop in the bucket? It's insurance against losing your work. I see no reason whatsoever to feel bad for 90% of writers that have data loss that destroys their work in progress when the ability to make copies is cheap and simple. "I don't know how" is not really an excuse anymore. If you're talking about writing as anything more than a hobby, then making backups of your livelihood is just part of the cost of doing business!

Rule Eleven: Write consistently to keep the ball rolling. If you decide to take a break, suddenly you forget what your protagonist was doing, or you forgot some detail that was important at the time (how did your hero pull a knife on the antagonist when he strapped on a gun before leaving his apartment?). It can be argued that these belong in the notes; they probably do. My way of working means that if it's an immediate detail I normally remember it the next day, while notes are made for things that will keep popping up or will be important a week from now. Taking a break of a few days in a row means you probably have to really push yourself to get back behind the keyboard and write again, just like skipping the gym a few days means needing that pep talk to get dressed to work out, shuffle to the car, drive to the gym...writing has enough challenges. You don't need to force yourself into a pep talk to do something you should be enjoying.

Rule Twelve: Write while you enjoy it. If you enjoy your story you increase the chances that your reader will enjoy it. I think that when it comes to fiction (or non-fiction, I suppose) you end up pushing some of your enthusiasm for the subject or story onto the reader. They pick up where you lose interest, and they know when your heart just isn't into it anymore. A good story should draw in the writer as much as the reader. If it fails to do so, you need to reevaluate the plot points and see why you're not caring about the protagonist and his or her journey through your created world.

Rule 13: Progress is progress. I have a goal of 500 words a day. I actually have come to expect 1,000+ words a day. There are some days where I fall short...like, a couple hundred words are all I manage to tap out before I have to call it quits for one reason or another. But that one or two hundred words are one or two hundred words more than that manuscript started the day with. I can't beat myself up over that. There are good days and bad days. The important thing is to keep making progress and keep getting a little farther ahead. As a result there are actually very very few days where I've made zero progress on the story, and I've had a few days that were only a couple hundred words and I have had a few days where I really surpassed my average by a significant margin. If I fall short one day...make it up later. I can't dwell on my shortcomings or I'll never finish the first draft!

I'm not a published author. I'm on the first steps towards trying to achieve that goal. I may fail miserably, and you can take my rules for what they're worth. In my world they have helped sustain me through many a doubt and many a fear, and I've written over one hundred thousand words with these rules in mind. I'm sure that as I go along I'll need to modify or add to these rules. For right now, at this stage in the game, I'm sticking to these. What do you think? Are there rules you use or rules you think should be altered here?

Writing Yourself Into a Corner

My current word count: 103,157, according to OpenOffice.

The topic: writing yourself into a corner. Ever have that happen?

I was aiming for around 100,000 to 110,000 words. That seems to be an approximate target for scifi novels, and while my story doesn't really involve spaceships it does seem to fit that kind of genre.

As you can see I've already blipped over the low end of the target range.

The thing is, I was coming up on what I thought was going to be the final scenes. Then I sat back and thought about how the main character and the antagonist were going to play it out; I discovered that no matter how I sliced it I didn't like the quick and dirty ending I originally sort of pictured.

This is something that probably depends a lot on your style of creating your story, though. I had only the roughest outline in my head of what I wanted to have happen. I don't have it broken down, as some people do, into a rought skeleton on which to hang more details and layer more details until all that needs to be done by the fifth time through is to add some adjectives and voila...done!

I've heard of other writers that will picture how they want the story to end, write that scene, then rewind and work up to that point. Not me!

Nope, I started with a "wouldn't it be cool if..." then started writing. My wife looked at a part of the early first draft and right off the bat said, "This opening is horrible..."

And she was right. I know what I need for an opening paragraph, an opening sentence, and my first draft's opening was truly sucktacular. Why? Because I had an extremely nebulous idea in my head of what I wanted to story out, and I sat down and just started typing until the idea started getting traction and headed the way of something resembling a story. As a result, the opening wanders, and has little to do with grabbing reader attention. The first half of the first chapter was more an exercise in gaining focus and introducing characters.

I think this is called "organic writing".

At this point I'm over my 100,000 mark and realizing that the ending will take a little longer than anticipated.  That's okay! I thought about what I was going to do, I have a tentative idea of what to do for a resolution. And it will be longer than anticipated.

Why? A few reasons.

One, this is a first draft. The ending may not work, the middle may have parts that don't work, and I may have issues with continuity in my first draft that I haven't even caught yet. Apparently there are times where parts of the story make perfect sense to me because I actually wrote the parts that make sense in my head, and not in the document. It happens. That 100,000 word count may quickly drop when I have to hack and slash parts out as well as redo scenes and details. It only takes about four pages of text to disappear to lose 1,000 words (as I recall the rough estimate is 250 words is about a page of text).

Second, I could change things. Like Paula B. left in a comment to the previous message, there could be ten or more rewrites in store. If the ending (or middle or beginning) doesn't work, I may need to rewrite entire chapters. This could dramatically alter my word count in one fell swoop of the delete key, and my word count is largely meaningless at the moment.

Third, page length is a guideline. Now, ignoring the word count entirely is a bad bad idea. No agent or publisher is going to accept an unknown author with a 300,000 word novel just because you think it's "da' bomb", and they probably don't care if you think they don't know what they're doing by passing up your work. But when you get a rough guideline of 100,000 words for a scifi novel and you come in at 120,000...well, they'll either tell you they'll take it on the requirement that you chop out 15,000 or so words, or they'll...probably tell you to chop out some of the words. If it's a good story, if they think it'll sell, they'll buy it if it's close to their guidelines. The important thing is the story. Grab them, entrance them, woo them...if they can't put down your manuscript, chances are you'll sell it to them, even if it is over (or under) size.

I'm not saying my story is the next big thing. I would hope it is, but let's face it...odds are stacked against me. A first story, from an unknown, still learning as he goes along. That's a really long shot. But if I focused entirely on reality then I'd quickly conclude this isn't worth the effort, and quite frankly I want to make a go at trying to be successful at something like this. So I have to focus on the possible positives as well as the likely negatives!

So what do I do now that I've written myself into a corner where my word count is steadily climbing and my ending is getting a little longer than I liked?

I keep writing. I write until there's something resembling a decent ending, then I give it a quick scan to fix up the beginning, alter some details here and there, give it the roughest coat of polish possible. Then I give it to someone else and see how much they recoil and how much effort it takes them to plow through it to the end, if they make it that far. I get feedback. I rework things that aren't working for them. I get this feedback early so I'm not agonizing over details in a chapter that will have to be tossed out completely.

Most importantly I keep going. I wish I could remember where I first heard, "You can't edit a blank page," so I could give proper credit where it's due. It's true. I can't stop and ponder forever what to do with the ending or wait for the perfect ending...I have to keep going, or I'll shelve my project and just never come back to it. So I just keep asking myself what should happen next, then I go with it. I know I could change it later if I have to.

I guess I'm saying that in my naivete there's no such thing as truly writing yourself into a corner. You just keep writing. Ask, "What should happen next given the current circumstances?" and you write it. Then you ask it again. And again. And again. If inspiration strikes later, you'll go back and fix it. But first, get the story down so you'll have something to fix!

Goals and Writing

My word count stands at 98,896 on the first draft.

I had been hoping to finish my first draft in November, spend December editing and rewriting, and then celebrate the New Year by starting my agent/publisher search and collecting my rejection notices.

Well, I still have a few more bits to go on the first draft. I'm thinking I'm very close to my final scenes as I have them laid out in my head, but I obviously didn't quite make my "Done In November" goal.

This brings me to goals in writing. I'm a little disappointed that I didn't make it, obviously, but I can't let it keep me down. I have, however, been keeping to my previous goal of 500+ words per day. Almost every day I have added over 1,000 words to the first draft. For me, with my schedule, that's very good. There have been only a few days where I have skipped adding to my manuscript, and if you average out my progress I have still managed to keep ahead of my goal by a decent margin.

Writing a book, or attempting to write a book in my case, takes discipline. Wanna-be writers have a huge bag of excuses at their disposal to derail writing that Great American Novel. I have plenty of them; I lack time, I lack talent, and the odds are greatly stacked against new authors trying to break into the market, the effort isn't worth it for the amount of money the vast majority of authors make from months (or years) of toil...

...and it's all true, for the most part. Or at least in some way valid.


So I started setting goals and evaluating how to meet those goals, and admitted that it takes a certain amount of discipline to meet those goals. I cut time out of the TV time to be replaced with "placing my butt in the seat and the hands on the keyboard". I don't have a home office space so I will take a laptop into the bedroom with a lapdesk so I have a slightly quieter space to try focusing a little better on my story.

My most basic goal is to make some advancement on the story each day, be it a 100 words or 1,000 words. I have good days and bad days, but I've had very very few days where I don't add something to the first draft.

I use these goals to keep me motivated through the doubts and fears. I don't have an English degree, I didn't even really like my English classes in school. I don't know if anyone would like my story; they very well might not. I fully acknowledge that this is a first attempt at writing anything more complicated than a long email and as such it will very likely not be anything near what the masters on the shelves at Barnes and Noble have written.

On the other hand, Anne Coulter and Glenn Beck have had books released as well.

So I plug on, focusing on my goals more than my fears. If I never get published, I'll have pride in knowing that I tried, and that I gave it an honest effort in addition to the pride of having made my goals and stuck with them.

If you want to achieve something in life you need to create goals to help measure your progress. If you don't make a milestone, you reassess and move on, continuing to make progress. Only fail yourself by giving up on your goals...so...I've failed to finish the first draft in November. I'm now going to try focusing on finishing it up as soon as I can into December so I can start editing and rewriting, and still at least try to start the query process in January. It's not too late to meet that goal yet...

The Reality of Making Income as an Author

Lynn Viehl had a reposted article on the Publetariat blog discussing her sales and royalties from Twilight Fall, a top twenty New York Times bestseller.

As has been customary, a quick update on my own work. I'm still plugging away on my first draft of a novel; I am currently at 92,465 words, and still keeping up an average of about a thousand words a day. I think that's pretty good while holding up another job and family. Well, my job. I don't have another family. We now return to my post-motivational-mention-of-wordcount blog post.

Lynn discusses quite a bit of information about her income on that book, which is a real jewel considering how few bits of information like this come out. The scary part is the uncertainty; she's a bestselling author, established, and that makes her not exactly in the same boat as people who are trying to break into the industry. But if I (and other beginners) somehow manage to "make it", this may be one possible outcome.

The details are spelled on on the blog posting, but she said that the total net sales for the novel are 61,663 copies. Her net earnings on this particular statement was $2,434.38...she noted that it would probably take another six months to a year to earn out the last of her advance ($50,000).

She says:
So how much money have I made from my Times bestseller? Depending on the type of sale, I gross 6-8% of the cover price of $7.99. After paying taxes, commission to my agent and covering my expenses, my net profit on the book currently stands at $24,517.36, which is actually pretty good since on average I generally net about 30-40% of my advance. Unless something triggers an unexpected spike in my sales, I don’t expect to see any additional profit from this book coming in for at least another year or two.

From what I understand, an advance of $50,000 is reserved for authors who are established and can generally be counted on as having solid sales.  I don't have any solid proof, per se, but I believe that a beginning author who manages to sell their first novel is lucky to get $5,000 to $15,000 as an advance. She states in the posting that she believes, anecdotally, that her numbers are below the average NYT top twenty bestseller list, though.

She goes on to say that if she were like many writers and put out one novel with these kinds of sales per year and her family of four were dependent only on her income then she'd be making around $2,500 over poverty level. She'd be barely above the qualification for food stamps. OUCH!

I've made no bones that I'd love to be a successful author and move into that as a career. The reality is that while persistence and support could raise the odds of "making it" in such a career, or at least place it above winning the lottery, there is a very real possibility that it will only be a supplemental income (assuming it actually makes any income...)

I honestly don't know what the future will hold. There's a good chance my efforts will result in no payoff. There's smaller odds that my efforts will pay off in just enough to go out to dinner to celebrate that it actually sold. There's a very very slim chance that I'll manage to write enough books to actually get angry that the government is taking most of the advance in taxes. Odds that float around somewhere near the planet Krypton lay the chances that I could actually quit my day job and follow my dream of a home office in which I spend my days writing.

No matter the odds, I swore I'd give this an honest try to sell it. So here goes nothing!