Here we are at the halfway point. The novel: on track and on time. By the end of today I will likely be a few hundred to a thousand words ahead of schedule. Everything has been going exceptionally well, especially considering those first few days where I nearly gave up on the entire endeavour. Continue reading
And here we are. Again. Sitting at zero words written with thirty days to go. Fifty thousands words looking like an unreachable mountain peak way off in the distance. And here I am just sitting at the bottom with only the faintest ideas of where the story begins and where it will end. Fun times are ahead. Continue reading
It’s been a bit of a struggle getting back into the writing mind-set, especially coming off five or so months of editing. It’s even harder to stop myself from going back through the previously written chapters and editing them to the nines. I keep catching myself scrolling back to the previous chapters and frowning and furrowing my brow and making corrections. To be brutally honest it is an aggravating annoyance. Continue reading
The editing process has continued down the seemingly never-ending track of corrections. Although I can see, off in the distance, the finish line. I quickly tackled the third revision which was entirely centered around grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors. And there were a lot of them. Oh yes. A. Lot.
But this fourth revision is mostly centered around tightening things up a bit more and making sure the continuity doesn’t contradict itself. I know of a bit of timing that I changed in the third revision, under a sleep deprived brain, that is terribly inaccurate. I also know, from various feedbacks I’ve received, that I need to explain a few things a bit better. But overall I think the novel will be done after this revision. I’ll be looking into how it needs to be formatted to receive my 5 free copies from winning at the NanoWriMo but that’s relatively minor.
From there I’m not sure where to really go. I’ll need to actually put some effort into looking for resources on how to get it published. I’ll be going the agent route I think. Self publishing is all well and good but I’d like more than a dozen or so people to read it before it gets smothered under the deluge of other self published titles.
It’s going to be a bit strange, I think, going from the editing process back into full-fledged writing. I think I’ll be returning to the novel I’ve spent the better part of decade thinking about and revising in my head. It has been cooking for a good long while. Finishing a novel, from start to finish, in a month and a half has actually giving me a bit of a burst in confidence. That now that I’ve done it once I know I can do it again.
While I’m writing about monsters and fate and death, all subjects I have a vast interest in apparently, I’ll be thinking about a sequel to the nearly finished novel. I’ve already got a bit of an idea for where it would go and it would continue the protagonist’s streak of terrible luck and terrible weeks. Much more so than this time. I like the setting, characters, and themes enough to see merit going back for a second time. I also like the style; there is something about a cyberpunk noir that just hits the right points in my brain’s pleasure center. Though it does need time to flesh itself out a bit. But I do know any sequel would need to have more of a focus on the augmentations and the actual sleuthing side of things.
Like I had done after finishing the first draft of the novel I ended up taking a two-week break once I’d finished the second. I took some time to unwind and clear my head. To try, and fail, to forget what I’d written to allow me to come back with a fresh perspective. Then, on Monday, I loaded up the document again and started the third draft.
However, unlike the original editing review I’d just completed this would be more of a… structural review. Wording and punctuation and grammar are the focus of this attempt; not expanding or contracting the actual story. I’m treating this as a complete review of every single paragraph; each gets reread minimum three times, if it doesn’t say what I want or a sentence is confusing it needs to be reworked. I have also come to the humiliating realization that it took me ten minutes to figure out how to spell serene. That sentence took on a whole new meaning, apparently, the guy looked like an amino acid.
I did forego the printed paper copy this time and I’m especially happy about that. I’ve found that I can edits twice as fast now that I’m not reading off paper then reading off the screen and contemplating if I can actually read my hand written notes.
I’ve sent off a few eBook copies of the second draft for opinions on the story. And really pretty much only the story. I knew, as I sent of the copies, that there were mechanical issues that needed to be corrected. But those are easy to address. If the very core of the narrative isn’t engaging no amount of grammatical tweaking is going to salvage it.
I suppose the people I sent the book to are a tad bit annoyed with me by this point. I don’t think they were expecting as many questions from me as I’ve been asking since, in general, I don’t like talking. But the general consensus is the first few chapters are good and that’s about it. Only one person has finished the novel so far, the other have either not started or are still only three or so chapters in.
From my sister, who has completed the book, she said she enjoyed it overall. She liked the characters and the plot, but did have a few issues with some parts: the girl and the sex scene being to big ones. And both of which I knew were going to be issues. The girl… I never settled on an age for her until I’d already written a chapter and a half with her and I’ll need to correct that this time through. The sex scene… I never wanted to write it to begin with. And I have to agree with her, it breaks the narrative flow and would be better served as a lead up to act. It… I guess it’s a jarring transition. Apparently I just write unsettling things and suspense better than romance.
Her big take away though was that one of the minor characters should be in it more often, since he was her favorite character. That’s not going to happen since the story obviously isn’t about him. She found the antagonist to be, in the end, pathetic enough that she felt sorry for him. The protagonist came off as a grumpy drunk who grew enough to start the process of changing his life. The side characters were fun, and she liked how the book ended. So at least it was enjoyable.
She did bring up an interesting suggestion about maybe writing a novel about his first meeting with the protagonist. There is a lot of action going on, I laid out the general plot in the novel itself already, and drunken cynical Mike was fun to write. The only thing is that there is no suspense. You already know that both of them survive and how.
There is also the issue with the title to address… I’ve tentatively changed it from “Perfection’s Trap” to “Seeking Perfection”. Still not happy with it. Although I do know I won’t be taking my sister’s suggestion and renaming it to “Stitches’ Super Happy Fun Time Adventure”. Just typing that out made me feel a little ashamed.
Writing Wasteland 