This one is something different for me, not simply an update on where I'm at with the writing, but a full-scale catch up on me and the things I've posted about on this blog before. In other words, a whole bunch'a ramblin' just because I felt like doing a post.
First, the writing. As you can see from the progress meter, Blood Games is officially done with the first draft. The Cochran books are now an official trilogy. That won't last long, because book four is on the horizon once I finish the current project, but it's still an accomplishment, right? I am now working my way through the first draft of Hidden Heart, the haunted house story I had in mind. This one is pretty tough, but in a good way. I think. See, it was always meant to be subtle. Sometimes I have a hard time with that. I'm eight chapters in now, and honestly not a lot has happened. Some things have, enough that the reader will realize there's more to the house in question than the current owner does anyway, but the poo hasn't hit the rotating blades yet, to modify a phrase. Soon, I think, since we're closing in on the end of the first act and the start of the second, but not yet. Hopefully everyone will like it once it's finished, as it's a complete change of pace for me. I guess we'll see.
I've been sick the last couple of days, so I didn't get much done on the editing front, hence no change to the progress meter for it. I tinkered with both One Last Dance and Homecoming, but not enough to amount to anything. Hopefully I'm over whatever bug this is in the next couple of days so I can get caught up there.
Still no response on either of the two submissions I have out there. I did reach out to a friend on Facebook who's going to school for graphic design about a cover for Consequences should it come to that, but I'm still holding out hope for a good response from one or the other.
Let's see, what else is going on...
I guess the biggest news is that I'm trying to quit smoking again. I went to vaping, since my primary motivation was a desire to keep my chest from hurting so bad whenever I woke up every morning. So far, so good. I've been doing it for about three weeks now, and I've reached the point where regular cigarettes taste like crap. Three days now, and I've only gotten my nicotine fix through vaping. I also managed to drop from the 18mg of nicotine that I started on to 12mg currently. Hopefully I'll be able to drop that again soon to 6mg. I don't know that I'll drop all the way to 0, but it's been a huge improvement so far. I can actually breathe now, and that's really what I was hoping for all along.
On the geeekdom front, I finally got to watch Jessica Jones on Netflix, and I have to say I'm impressed. I'm not as stoked for a Luke Cage series now since I kinda got my fix for him with this one, but at the same time Marvel is doing well with their mature-themed series. The little nods to the MCU make it even better. If only DC could catch a clue with Arrow, Flash, and the upcoming Legends of Tomorrow. But I've already made that point, so I'll move on.
On the DC front, Arrow and Flash are both turning out strong seasons, with Flash easily getting over the sophomore slump and Arrow taking things in a new direction with Green Arrow and the addition of mysticism to the universe. Have to say, so far the highlight was seeing John Constantine show up in Arrow using the same actor from the cancelled Constantine. Love the actor in that role, now someone needs to pick the series back up and do it justice.
I caught the first episode of Supergirl, and while it wasn't what I expected, it was far from being bad. Still, a superhero show nowadays needs to do more than just "cute" to work, at least for me.
I wasn't too sure about this season of Doctor Who, but they finally won me over. The two-part episodes felt like a throwback to the classic series where it might take six episodes to tell one story. On the whole, it's been a strong season, with only one or two episodes that made me feel "meh" about the whole thing. We got Osgood back, and in a way that made sense, and Capaldi has proven beyond any doubt that he IS the Doctor. His speech at the end of Face the Raven actually sent chills down my back. And last week's strange, mindbender of an episode was the perfect intermission between the events of Face the Raven and the potentially massive season finale coming up this Saturday.
Ash vs. Evil Dead. What can I say? It's Bruce Campbell as Ash, it's got the Necronomicon, deadites, blood, gore, and cheese. It's thirty minutes of heaven every episode.
The last trailer for The Force Awakens actually got me interested. I still wish they hadn't canned the entire EU (although there's truthfully not a lot I'll miss from it), but I'm willing to give it a chance, and I'm going to be standing in line in a couple weeks waiting to see if it lives up to the considerable hype.
The Avengers 2.5... I mean the Captain America: Civil War trailer was incredible as well. I can't wait to see how this plays out, but they've got me involved either way. "I have to do this," Cap says. "He's my friend." "Yeah, so was I." Tony replied, his voice sad. Chills.
That pretty well sums me up for the moment. Once Doctor Who is done (including the Christmas special - can't leave out River) I'll do an overall season review on here. We'll see if I'm excited enough about Star Wars to do the same for it. Otherwise, I'll keep everyone updated on the writing progress and attempts at publication as the news comes in.
See you next time!
Showing posts with label The Experiment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Experiment. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Friday, November 6, 2015
Where Did That Come From?
You are seeing things correctly. There is a new listing on the progress meter, it has never been up there before, and it is already listed as a third draft in progress. I can explain.
Back in 2005, I started what ended up being my first original novel. I freely admit I really had no idea what I was doing with the actual writing craft part of it, but I knew it was a story I wanted to tell. I finished it in 2006, a year and a half later, and then filed it away.
Some time passed, and I found myself working in a bookstore in a college town. Someone I worked with there, a lovely woman named Patti, was an English major and agreed to do an edit on the first draft for me. When I got the manuscript back from her, I was floored. Stephen King mentions in On Writing how he reacted the first time he ever saw one of his pieces of writing edited. All I can say is that reading is one thing, seeing is something completely different. And this wasn't even from a professional editor, just someone who knew what they were doing.
Out of the nearly 270 pages I gave her, maybe five did not contain markings of some sort. It opened my eyes to the process, and I was re-energized. I wanted to make this work. I started banking on it, to a degree.
Let me go ahead and say it now: while I thought I understood how the publishing industry worked, I truly had no clue. The other thing I neglected to take into consideration was that the economy was bottoming out due to the recession, and the industry was shifting into eBooks, which were nothing more than a novelty at this point. We won't even touch the fact that I was a first-time, never before published author who was expecting his first submitted work of any kind to be the ticket to fortunes. Bottom line, I was an idiot. But I digress.
I got to work and finished a second draft at the end of 2007. Thinking the book was as done as it could get (hilarious to look back at now, but that was what I thought), I pulled out a copy of the Writer's Guide and queried a bunch of agents. I did get one request for the full manuscript, which I sent off gleefully only to be told they didn't feel passionate enough about it to offer me representation. I know now that it was a polite way of saying it wasn't good enough.
Life took over, I got discouraged, and into a manuscript box and the depths of my hard drive it went.
Fast forward to now.
I sat down and wrote Consequences with the intent of trying for publication through a small press, or doing it myself if no one bit. While working on it, I realized that if I did self publish, there were these things called formatting guidelines to follow if I didn't want it to look like something a five-year-old threw together one rainy afternoon. Several people offered to do it for a price, usually $200 and up, but since I'm not exactly rolling in cash here, I decided why pay for it if I could learn to do it myself with a little work? Only I didn't have a finished manuscript to practice with.
So I dug through my hard drive and digitally dusted off Homecoming. As I worked on formatting, I realized there were parts of the book that weren't that bad. With a little polish, it might even be salvageable. Then I finished Consequences, moved on to Demon and the rest and forgot about it. Sort of.
It sat in the back of my head. See, this was my first, and you never forget your first. So I decided to conduct a little experiment. I was going to teach myself how to edit using Word's "Track Changes" feature, since any professional editor I use nowadays will be using the same method. In doing so, I was also going to see if I could breathe some new life into this old manuscript, maybe apply some of the things I learned in the intervening years and make it something I would be willing to put out there for other people to read and not wince any time someone brought it up.
The first step? Clean up. It took no time at all to realize that I had no idea how to properly format a manuscript, even in draft form, back when I started this one. Since I now use a Word template already set up with the styles I need for new projects, I copied and pasted the entire mess into the template, then spent roughly six hours fixing my old formatting errors. Once that was done, it was time to start playing Doctor Frankenstein.
I decided to go from scene start to scene break: make the edit notes, copy and paste it into a new document, then make changes. I learned a few things in doing this. First, I had no idea how to break chapters properly. Chapter one became chapters one and two pretty quickly. Same for two becoming three and four. I'm sure more will appear as I go, too. Second, there is definitely something to be said for letting something rest for such a long period of time before approaching it again. As I write this, I've got fifty pages into what is effectively the third draft but feels more like a complete rewrite. Out of that fifty pages, I've made 480 edit comments. On some pages, Word has to collapse all the notes because they won't fit in the margin of the page otherwise. Honestly, it's made me a little afraid to see what a professional editor would do to one of my manuscripts that I've already done four drafts on. Excuse me while I shiver uncontrollably for a second.
The third and fourth things I learned I'll put together, since they belong that way. I've gotten better at my craft since that first attempt. To my mind, the fact that I have that many notes in such a short span reinforces that fact. Everything I've changed, removed, reordered, or rewritten has made the story stronger. But that only makes sense, because like any other craft, writing can only be perfected through practice.
Homecoming was not the only thing I wrote in the years between when I first started it and when I developed the work ethic I have now with it. While I have no plans to give those stories the same treatment I'm giving this one (though I'm not ruling it out, either), I have a funny feeling that if I did, I'd be able to see improvement with each successive one. Since I got serious serious about this in July, I've finished four more first drafts and am almost halfway through a fifth. But there's even more than that, if you think about it. I did four drafts of Consequences before I submitted it, and I'm about to start the third for Demon at the Window, and am in the midst of the second for One Last Dance. That means, in a sense, eight complete books, plus two halves (first for the current one, second for OLD), so nine books since July. I'm not tooting my horn about being prolific; just reinforcing the bit about practice bringing improvements.
I have no idea if I'll be satisfied with the final result of this experiment, whether or not I'll call it a success or a failure, but it's definitely been a learning experience. I feel good about it, at least for now. So it goes on the progress meter. If it doesn't work, I'll remove it again. But maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to someday get to see that dream of having Homecoming with a cover and binding in my hands and yours.
Wish me luck!
Back in 2005, I started what ended up being my first original novel. I freely admit I really had no idea what I was doing with the actual writing craft part of it, but I knew it was a story I wanted to tell. I finished it in 2006, a year and a half later, and then filed it away.
Some time passed, and I found myself working in a bookstore in a college town. Someone I worked with there, a lovely woman named Patti, was an English major and agreed to do an edit on the first draft for me. When I got the manuscript back from her, I was floored. Stephen King mentions in On Writing how he reacted the first time he ever saw one of his pieces of writing edited. All I can say is that reading is one thing, seeing is something completely different. And this wasn't even from a professional editor, just someone who knew what they were doing.
Out of the nearly 270 pages I gave her, maybe five did not contain markings of some sort. It opened my eyes to the process, and I was re-energized. I wanted to make this work. I started banking on it, to a degree.
Let me go ahead and say it now: while I thought I understood how the publishing industry worked, I truly had no clue. The other thing I neglected to take into consideration was that the economy was bottoming out due to the recession, and the industry was shifting into eBooks, which were nothing more than a novelty at this point. We won't even touch the fact that I was a first-time, never before published author who was expecting his first submitted work of any kind to be the ticket to fortunes. Bottom line, I was an idiot. But I digress.
I got to work and finished a second draft at the end of 2007. Thinking the book was as done as it could get (hilarious to look back at now, but that was what I thought), I pulled out a copy of the Writer's Guide and queried a bunch of agents. I did get one request for the full manuscript, which I sent off gleefully only to be told they didn't feel passionate enough about it to offer me representation. I know now that it was a polite way of saying it wasn't good enough.
Life took over, I got discouraged, and into a manuscript box and the depths of my hard drive it went.
Fast forward to now.
I sat down and wrote Consequences with the intent of trying for publication through a small press, or doing it myself if no one bit. While working on it, I realized that if I did self publish, there were these things called formatting guidelines to follow if I didn't want it to look like something a five-year-old threw together one rainy afternoon. Several people offered to do it for a price, usually $200 and up, but since I'm not exactly rolling in cash here, I decided why pay for it if I could learn to do it myself with a little work? Only I didn't have a finished manuscript to practice with.
So I dug through my hard drive and digitally dusted off Homecoming. As I worked on formatting, I realized there were parts of the book that weren't that bad. With a little polish, it might even be salvageable. Then I finished Consequences, moved on to Demon and the rest and forgot about it. Sort of.
It sat in the back of my head. See, this was my first, and you never forget your first. So I decided to conduct a little experiment. I was going to teach myself how to edit using Word's "Track Changes" feature, since any professional editor I use nowadays will be using the same method. In doing so, I was also going to see if I could breathe some new life into this old manuscript, maybe apply some of the things I learned in the intervening years and make it something I would be willing to put out there for other people to read and not wince any time someone brought it up.
The first step? Clean up. It took no time at all to realize that I had no idea how to properly format a manuscript, even in draft form, back when I started this one. Since I now use a Word template already set up with the styles I need for new projects, I copied and pasted the entire mess into the template, then spent roughly six hours fixing my old formatting errors. Once that was done, it was time to start playing Doctor Frankenstein.
I decided to go from scene start to scene break: make the edit notes, copy and paste it into a new document, then make changes. I learned a few things in doing this. First, I had no idea how to break chapters properly. Chapter one became chapters one and two pretty quickly. Same for two becoming three and four. I'm sure more will appear as I go, too. Second, there is definitely something to be said for letting something rest for such a long period of time before approaching it again. As I write this, I've got fifty pages into what is effectively the third draft but feels more like a complete rewrite. Out of that fifty pages, I've made 480 edit comments. On some pages, Word has to collapse all the notes because they won't fit in the margin of the page otherwise. Honestly, it's made me a little afraid to see what a professional editor would do to one of my manuscripts that I've already done four drafts on. Excuse me while I shiver uncontrollably for a second.
The third and fourth things I learned I'll put together, since they belong that way. I've gotten better at my craft since that first attempt. To my mind, the fact that I have that many notes in such a short span reinforces that fact. Everything I've changed, removed, reordered, or rewritten has made the story stronger. But that only makes sense, because like any other craft, writing can only be perfected through practice.
Homecoming was not the only thing I wrote in the years between when I first started it and when I developed the work ethic I have now with it. While I have no plans to give those stories the same treatment I'm giving this one (though I'm not ruling it out, either), I have a funny feeling that if I did, I'd be able to see improvement with each successive one. Since I got serious serious about this in July, I've finished four more first drafts and am almost halfway through a fifth. But there's even more than that, if you think about it. I did four drafts of Consequences before I submitted it, and I'm about to start the third for Demon at the Window, and am in the midst of the second for One Last Dance. That means, in a sense, eight complete books, plus two halves (first for the current one, second for OLD), so nine books since July. I'm not tooting my horn about being prolific; just reinforcing the bit about practice bringing improvements.
I have no idea if I'll be satisfied with the final result of this experiment, whether or not I'll call it a success or a failure, but it's definitely been a learning experience. I feel good about it, at least for now. So it goes on the progress meter. If it doesn't work, I'll remove it again. But maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to someday get to see that dream of having Homecoming with a cover and binding in my hands and yours.
Wish me luck!
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