HF Novel Update 10/14/17 (Day 28)

Editing Time: Zilch.

Didn't get to the book yesterday and that was probably a good thing. When I woke up this morning, I thought of a couple tiny things I wanted to tweak, but those can wait till after the proofing is done. These are really minor, minor changes, ones that don't significantly impact the story. As in, ADD THIS ONE THOUGHT HERE and OVER THERE.

But honestly, I could publish the story without making those changes. Between now and when I release, I'll continue to get ideas about how to "improve" the book but I know from past experience that this will happen no matter what. It doesn't mean these things must be done to make the story "perfect." Hell, I still think about how I should have done XXX in the 2nd book in my paranormal thriller series, and that story has been out for 3 years now and it's doing just fine.

Any more changes I want to make at this point to The Bastard's Refuge are probably just my subconscious's way of stalling.

So with that said, the book is effectively done.

I failed in my challenge. It took me 28 days instead of 21 to write a publishable book. Oh darn ;-)

It's funny when I look back at the first post I wrote about this challenge. It's either prophetic, or just a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I quote:

"So what if I fail?

If it takes me 28 days as opposed to 21, I'VE STILL WRITTEN AND EDITED A FULL LENGTH NOVEL IN A MONTH."

Maybe my brain knew all along I'd need a little bit longer with the book than I thought. When I set out, I was picturing a 90K story. The book grew into 110K.

HF Novel Update 10/13/17 (Day 27)

Editing Time: 4 hours

I'm happy with where the manuscript is, though the story is wearing me out. I had planned on editing for 6 to 7 hours, but I just didn't "have it" yesterday.

Now this is where you might be thinking, "Evan, you should have set the MS aside and come back to it later. You've only edited for a week and you're already burned out!"

To which I would respond, "I always get burned out editing, even when I set the book aside for a month or longer. And by quick check, I've spent ~50 hours editing this mofo. I suspect that, no matter when the editing happened, I'd be burned out after 50 hours of it."

Today I won't get much time to edit but that's okay. To borrow an artist's expression, I feel I'm tickling the story at this point. So I'm ready to step away from the book and fire it off to the proofreader. I don't want to look at this story again till I hit PUBLISH next month.

Because this is a new genre for me and I'm releasing it under my real name (which has no other writing credits on Amazon), I do need to do a ton of marketing before the book launches. I'm considering trying Instafreebie for the next 30 days to build up some anticipation for the release. After the launch, I'll try some ads as well.

That's all for now.

HF Novel Update 10/12/17 (Day 26)

Editing Time: 5 hours

I was hoping to get more work done yesterday, but I crashed "early" last night. Cumulative fatigue. I've been burning the candle at both ends, staying up way too late after the kiddies go to bed to get work done. So last night I punched out at 10:30.

Through the weekend I'll work my way through the manuscript again. At this point the story is right, everything is where it needs to go, and the characters are fleshed out. My goal on this pass is to fine-tune the language and cut out the fat, hopefully turning a 114K manuscript into a 100K - 105K novel.

Later today I'll post the cover ;-)

HF Novel Update 10/11/17 (Day 25)

Editing Time: 6 hours

I didn't get through a huge chunk of the story yesterday, but the edits were quality. Several paragraphs were simply tossed out. In many places, five or six sentences became three or four, with the ideas expressed much more clearly and powerfully. All good stuff.

Today I have a couple rewrites then will finish the "3rd" draft. For the next three days (Day 26 - 28), I'll go through the book one more time from beginning to end and tighten things up as best I can. I'm also considering getting a proofreader. The Bastard's Refuge is almost twice as long as the other books I've written, so I suspect I'm missing twice as many errors.

Onward.

HF Novel Update 10/8/17 (Day 22)

Didn't get to the book today. Reality happened.

Deo volente, I will edit for an hour tonight.

***

While passing the time doing chores, I thought a lot about the psy thriller I'm reworking as well as another one. And then an idea for the third book Greg Owen book came to me too. This always happens. My brain is like that airport in Die Hard 2. All the ideas are circling overhead, dangerously low on fuel and impatiently waiting their turn to land before they crash and burn. I can't bring them in fast enough. If only I had a proverbial John McClane to (SPOILER ALERT FOR A 27 YEAR OLD MOVIE) light up the runway for me using a lighter and airplane fuel.

This is not to say all these ideas are good ones. A few won't get past the initial holy-crap-this-is-awesome stage, and a few won't get past the outline stage. That's how it seems to go for me. With all that being said, I've never understood when other writers complain about not having any ideas. I have the opposite problem. My brain looks for ways to turn everything into a story.

As I was watching Bladerunner 2049 this weekend, I thought, Wouldn't it be a cool story if a guy made a perfect copy of himself so he could observe and see himself as others do? Then he would be able to notice and improve all his flaws ... but what if he couldn't deal with watching himself. And what if the copy couldn't deal with Prime Guy watching him all the time either? After a while, all they both see are the flaws and they become totally depressed. Prime Guy realizes that it's better to have a partly-delude sense of self and Copy doesn't want to be like Prime Guy ...



 

HF Novel Update 10/7/17 (Day 21)

Editing Time: 4 hours
Total Word Count: 112,624

I can feel work beginning to slow on this book now. The second draft is done. Now I'm going to spend a few hours each day and whittle away. My goal is to have something publishable in a week. I think that's do-able.

Working title: The Bastard's Refuge
Series title: Dunno
Author Name: Still not sure

HF Novel Update 10/4 and 10/5 (Days 18 and 19)

Editing Time: 10 hours
Total Word Count: 107,037

10/4 Update -

Yesterday I only edited for a couple hours. What I realized, going into the editing phase, is that I don't have a specific plan. I know there are about 11 big ticket items that need to be fixed from a story perspective, but rather than attack them one by one, which would require jumping all over the place to different parts of the manuscript, I just started reading the book from the beginning. Got about 50 pages through, fixing typos and the big picture stuff as I came across it. It was slow-going. Real slow. I realized that my brain needed a break from the story. So I switched gears and went back to tinkering with a psy thriller I've decided to fix and publish.

10/5 Update -

Already got 5 hours of work in as I'm writing this and plan to do another 3 hours after the kiddies go to bed. It was a wise decision to take a break yesterday from this story. (Sometimes I get it right!) I was really fresh today and the editing hummed along. I've gotten to about the halfway mark of the story. The prose still needs tightening up in many places, but I'm saving that for my next pass. The big picture stuff (oh yeah, the characters decided to do THIS instead of THAT) is more important than the prose in this stage of the process. And, arguably, in every stage of the process.

***

Editing is a strange thing. I both love and hate it. When I'm thinking about it and not actually doing it, editing seems incredibly daunting. The internal monologue goes like this: Oh, right, I have to fix that. And then that. Oh crap, there's also that other thing in Chapter 5. And this. And that. And I should really go back and add this. AND CUT THAT OVER THERE! And I just got another idea! The last line of the book should be "X, Y, and Z." And this over here ...

When I'm not actually editing and only thinking about all the things I have to do, my mind is focused on what's wrong with the story, instead of what's right. It also feels like I have to fix a million things and it's going to take forever. The To Do List continues to grow in my mind till it feels like the book will never be finished, or finished satisfactorily. It skews my perspective and so it should come as no surprise that I get incredibly down on the book.

But then I stop thinking about editing and start actually doing it. And suddenly my perspective changes like somebody flipped a switch inside my brain.

This morning before I started, I thought, "This book needs so much work! I have to change almost everything!"

But then after I got to work, I thought, "The beginning is actually pretty good. So is the transition to the 2nd act. And the fixes have been relatively easy, most of them quick and painless."

Sometimes I think the hardest part of being a writer is just figuring out when to listen to your internal voice and when not to.