Long Overdue Update

There's a serious lag / letdown upon the completion of a manuscript and the start of the agent hunting process. I did take the advice of many writers and get to work on the next novel while waiting to hear from agents. That novel is yet untitled and lacking a complete first draft - though I did learn from my mistakes on the GIANT and prepared an extensive outline.

I sent my query and synopsis to a dozen agents. I received kind words (form kind words for all I know), but no requests to see any the manuscript. I'm now in the process of revising the query letter. Well, I've thrown out the old one and I'm starting over. I'm not listening to any advice, reading any blogs, or pouring through books on writing this time. I'm going with my gut and my wife's comments only.

Why the long delay? There's a new baby in the house - joining the toddler already living here, so there's been quite an adjustment taking place. I'm predicting 2011 as the year of the GIANT.

Agents and Publishers

Before I go back to the editing / writing, I'm taking a few weeks off to clear my brain. Now I've been looking at how to contact agents in order to get the GIANT published. I've been reading through a lot of books on the subject and have learned valuable information. The best of which has been how to find an agent, how to write them, and get noticed. Every book stresses the importance of tight and professional correspondence, but that one I already knew. The process of landing an agent isn't too far off from landing a job.

I'm currently working on a query letter - a one page synopsis of the book. A thirty second pitch of sorts. Soon I'm going to put together a longer synopsis - which could be in the neighborhood of twenty pages. I'm going to work from my already established outline, but translate it into prose, and add in the best sentences and passages from the book.

The downside of reading all these books on publishing and writing is that they have instilled doubt in me. Am I really a writer? I don't know all the writing rules, I'm certainly not a professional. I don't even have a creative writing class to my credit. I'm confident the story is there - flow and motivation and all that (that is until I reread the latest draft), but I'm doubting my technical ability. I'm hoping though, that on a reread I acutally do know all the rules, just not what an infinitive (and all the other fancy writing words) is - like a person that can't read sheet music, but can play by ear.

Another draft finished. One more to go?

I'm working on two GIANT related items right now - one is finding and agent / publisher, the other is writing. Having just come from the writing desk, I'll speak about writing here.

I finished up the last draft quicker than I though - it was short - only dealing with four or five chapters, but two of those were completely new. It turned out the newest chapters were the easiest to edit - there was little change needed. It was mostly pacing, dialog and typo pickups. It leads me to think that I'm finally figuring out how to write. I've read a lot of 'how I write books' lately - all by established authors. Everyone of them says they only have three or so big drafts of their novels. That worried me - I've at least doubled that number. I knew that everyone works differently and I'm still early in my writing development, but still . . . So finding those new chapters in great shape boosted my confidence.

The other half of the edit was more rigorous, but well worth it. I had earlier made hand edits to the first few chapters of the second section of the book. The chapters were really suffering from poor flow, bad description, and a serious case of Boring. I cut a ton out of the paragraphs and rearranged a lot of what was left to really pick up the pacing. Additionally strengthened the back story and main character's motivation.

After all this I started a new draft for the cleanup last pass before I start shopping this around. Though all my paragraphs were not indented and had spaces between them. This made it handier to print and correct and had a good look on the screen, but needed to be standardized. It took about an hour and a half to indent all the paragraphs - in the end I took out 30 of 249 pages just by removing white space. Whew. In a few weeks I'm going to sit back down and start the typo pass.

Another Draft is Finished!

I can feel the end of this book coming on. I finished up the new ending this afternoon. There's one whole new chapter plus an epilogue sort of thing. Before those is a chapter that was heavily reworked and a moderately reworked chapter. So . . . those chapters will need a few more passes by themselves to make sure it's fit to be included with the rest of the GIANT.

Furthermore, I have to finish up my hand edit of a few of the earlier chapters and make the digital revisions. Barring any outside life scheduling conflicts, it's about a month's worth of work. After that I'll need to run through the whole thing once for for at least a spelling and typo check and, I hope, at worst a minor here-and-there touch up. It may turn out that it will be a light revision and I'll need a typo check follow up after that. The last thing I want to do is send this thing out and there be a bunch of stupid typos or confusing sentences.

Writing a New Ending

I've had the opportunity to devote a lot of time to writing as of late, and feel that if I don't take the opportunity to do it now, I'll never have it again. So, I've been writing and editing, writing and writing a lot these past few weeks. I think its paying off - the proof of course will be when I try to shop this thing around. Most of what I've been reading lately is good - there's not a lot of cutting and rewriting anymore. I'm not sighing and asking myself why I wrote so much terrible nonsense. Not to say that everything is golden - there are still rough patches here and there.

Today I made it to the end of the draft and started writing a new ending to the novel (the GIANT). I was afraid of this - I know what the ending is - I don't have an outline, but its only a chapter or two. I do have a number of conversations sketched out as well. BUT - for the most part it would have to come out of my head and end up on the screen - the screen that is blank. To counter this end of the line blankness, I pasted in a paragraph that I had cut from the old ending, but wanted to rework into the new ending, so I could fool myself into thinking I was just rolling along with the edit as I've been doing for months now.

Turns out, I didn't have much to fear. The words just poured out of me, which was a relief. It was going so well that ideas for further along in the ending were coming to me, so I wrote them in as well. Not bad.

While I've been working on the computer, I've been hand editing a few chapters from earlier in the book. They are the first three chapters from the NOW section of the novel (see earlier posts if you're confused, but NOW is basically the second half of the book). There are some ROUGH stretches in these chapters. I've discovered a shortcoming in that I have trouble describing places. Description of action comes much easier for me. This is something I'll have to work on.

As soon as I'm finished with this hand edit, I'm going to make the revisions to the digital file. Then I'll go back and edit the as yet not finished new ending. From there I'm going to go through the whole thing again and check for errors - hopefully it won't need much intensive editing. If all goes well its a spell check and I'm off to look for agents and publishers.

Writer's Block

My former understanding of writer's block came from popular media. Writer's block was something like this: a writer sits in front of his typewriter staring at a blank piece of paper, unable to think of the final paragraph that will finish his next great american novel.

Here's what I think it is now. Writer's block is an impasse between the brain and the paper (or screen). I'm editing now, and its going pretty well, but I find patches that I want to rework. Usually these are parts where my intended theme or idea just isn't coming through - there was a problem with the langauge. Ha! Sometimes I find the words to fix it, sometimes I just struggle with the idea still in my head. It's SO frustrating to type a few words, then delete them, type some other words, then yell ARGH and delete those. I get fidgety - if I have music on I'll turn it off, no music on? Well lets hear some tunes - maybe that will help.

Too often I have walked away from the computer and come back later (sometimes its 15 minutes, sometimes a day), but I'm really trying to stop doing that now. This book isn't going to write itself for one, but I'm also not going to get better unless I force myself through the tough patches. I'm too far along with this novel to leave problems to be fixed in later drafts. I don't see too many more drafts before I start shopping this thing around for publishing (thankfully - what a long road its been). So I do my best to sit still and type my way out of all the plot messes and descriptive duds I wrote myself into. The proof, ultimately, will be in the reading - my hope is that when I'm finished most of the next draft will just be picking up typos and switching "there" into "their" and "wonder" into "wander" - wish I would have paid more attention in fourth grade english.

Ok, Now I'm Excited Again

I was down to the last nine pages of the edit, plus the new ending chapter I had to write from scratch. It turned out that I painted myself into a corner, or wrote a story to nowhere, I suppose in this case. What to do, what to do? I tried diagramming what I wanted the ending to be, but couldn't make it fit with the story I had in place. Uh oh.

If I couldn't make the ending fit the story, I would make the story fit the ending. Here's what I did: I typed my handwritten outline and made revisions. I made a quick sketch of what parts of the story would have to change and noted that on the printed outline. There was quite a bit of red by the time I was finished. To top it off I wrote some character sketches. Some would say you should write those before your fifth? draft. Whatever.

With these vital documents in hand I turned back to the computer. Draft 5 became draft 5a and away I went. Much to my surprise a lot of what I read was actually good. The first few days of the edit I flew through 20% of the novel. Not bad. The effort wasn't the slash and burn then rewrite extensively affair that previous revisions have been. Of course, this is not a major revision, just a tweak (hence the A in the draft number). For the most part I moved around sentences and paragraphs. I did write a fair amount, but took out much less. I added about eight computer pages and only took out one and a half.

The first few days went well, but the next two (also the last two) have been a little slower. A little background: There are two sections to the book - Before and Now. Before takes place (somewhat confusingly) in modern times. Now is 100-200 years in the future when life as we know it has been destroyed. Before is about 20% of the total. The past few days I've been working on Now, which during the previous edit I added a lot to the beginning. Reading it this week, it showed.

Some paragraphs looked scabbed together while the rest were obviously untouched or completely new. It might have been quicker for me to start over, but the thought of all that white is so intimidating. Methodically I moved paragraphs and sentences around to make the story flow with the new outline. On top of that I added a few paragraphs - Now was just not flowing as well as Before. There was so much revision that I added a new chapter. It's a short one, but it explains a lot to the reader. Previously I had spread out too many revelations through the entire story. Now, in Now, the reader gets a Cliff's Notes type explanation of the future (remember that Now is in the future).

To make a long story short - I have made some good changes that will make the story purposeful and upon reading my work over I feel that all the writing is finally at a level I am proud of.

Ugh

Lately I've been thinking that I should just give up, that the GIANT is a waste of time. I'll never work out the story, never make the plot believable for everyone. In the past I've felt this way when I've hit a block, a rut, and that is also the case now. So, just a chapter short of the finish, I'm putting the writing on hold.

Just a few minutes ago I sketched out a revised plot and restructured ending which I'm confidnet makes 100% more sense. I think next I'll type out my handwritten outline and reincorporate my newest ideas. THEN, I'll go back and rework the changed chapters and sections until I find myself at the new ending.

After that I'll keep to my old plan of revising the first section, then skipping the middle so I can incorporate similar language and structure into the ending, finishing with the middle. I'll keep my fingers crossed that I will then end up with a publishable book.

As a side note, I'm outlining another novel (as yet untitled) - I'm on the fifth or sixth draft of the outline and I've made extensive notes. I have four pages of characters names, motivation and descriptions and lots of notes on the story - so I'm learning! If I'm to be a writer after all, I'll try to be a good and efficient one.

Plans for the Next Edit

I continue to make major cuts towards the end here. Granted, I did revise the plot making much of the text outdated, but during past edits I think I cruised towards the end. Before, when I was near the end I tended to gloss over errors (this is obvious to me reading it now).

My plans for the next edit, starting sometime in the spring will be to revise the first section first, then I will jump into the ending. This should give me a fresh take on the end and also allow me to tie in themes and language from the beginning into the end.

I'm going to type my handwritten outline so I can make further changes to it before the next edit as I'm still having doubts wondering if readers will completely buy into the world I have created. Still I don't feel that I have explained themes enough. Is this a case of me trying to seek higher levels of perfection, or am I still coming into my own as a writer?

Draft 5 is nearing completion

I've had a lot of time to write lately and it's been going well. The weather has been nice this week which has also lifted my spirits and cast a warmer glow on the GIANT.

I've done a lot more cutting than writing lately - the total page count has dropped by ten or so this week. It had been holding steady at 200+ digital pages (probably 400 or so printed book pages), but now has dropped under 200. Much of the cut passages were marked "already covered" as I shifted the plot back somewhat. Too many of the revelations and developments were loaded at the end - which would made for a confusing and boring read. I have spread out the big points (excitement?) to add more suspense.

I'm closing in on the end of the draft, though I'm going to add a new ending to it. Now the ending is free floating, I'm going to add a section that makes it more concrete and answers some questions that were left floating.

Feeling Good

I'm feeling really good about the GIANT now. I have only 66 pages to go and am hitting a stretch of the book that doesn't need so much intensive work. When I have to rewrite a passage or a sentence I'm never sure if I'll like it on the edit, but when I'm happy with work I previously redid, well that's doubly good. I liked it when I wrote it and I like it now.

Despite my efforts at creating an outline I've had to pop around the story to answer questions that pop up. Most of the time this has been a case of me doubting my outline (it has been pretty thorough and accurate), only occasionally did I neglect to write a point down on the outline. The short? The outline I've written post story has been helpful and accurate.

When I've been popping around the story I have run across good parts, some of which I wrote on this current draft. Isn't that good news? I still like the work I wrote a few weeks or months ago. This book just might turn into something after all.

This Isn't Bad

I have focused on numbers lately, but I have been doing a lot of good writing as well. I've been keeping a list of questions dating back for a year or more. The questions are pretty much the result of my not having an outline. Have I properly explained this plot point? Is this idea believable? Was this made up word previously defined?

In addition to this draft being a response to my editors comments and my revisions, I'm also working hard to answer all those outstanding questions. Lately, as I've entered the thick of the story, I'm crossing off a lot of the questions and the GIANT is shaping up quite well. The plot flows and has really become intricate.

There's substance to the story and some mystery, and not the fake mystery the story had before. When I originally wrote the GIANT, I had a rough idea of the plot tucked neatly away in my head and no idea what the ending was going to be. I remember the gleeful day when I told my wife that I knew how the book was going to end (I have since changed the ending). Not knowing what was going to happen, I inserted a lot of false mystery that did nothing but confuse the reader - as my editor pointed out to me. I groaned many times reading through my work and wrote more than one "where are you going with this?" in the margins. If I cannot answer that question now, I cut out the false mystery.

11 More Pages

I slammed out 11 more pages today in just over an hour. An hour seems to be a good time frame for inputting edits for me. Any longer and I get really twitchy. I'm happy when I run across a page with only a few edits on it. But they are few. Most have lots of scrawled out passages, arrows, and other notes I have trouble following. When will I learn to write clearly?

I try not to mention my life outside the book too often - only when something has a great impact on my work. I am for the second time in four months out of work again. Which leaves me with a lot of free time to work on projects like the GIANT, but leaves me with a shortage of money (with which I like to buy food). So I have spent much time looking for jobs (there aren't many out there) and worrying. It had been eight days before today since I worked on the GIANT. I hope that I can at least find 30-60 minutes a day to dedicate to the edits.

Now there are Three

Three members of the family that is. My wife and I’s first child was born three weeks ago. I have purposely kept most personal events away from this. I don’t want it to become a personal blog. But the birth of my child will have a big impact on the GIANT. I haven’t touched the latest draft since her birth. There are certainly enough other things to keep me occupied.

At this point it would be very easy to put the thing down, forget about it for a few years. Afterall, I will most likely have to pay to publish the book. So why not forget about it for ten years or so. Wouldn’t that be a treat? What would I think of it then? I would probably have to start from scratch. So I must dig down even deeper to stay motivated to finish the work if this thing is going to see the possibility of an audience of more than one.

But the break hasn’t been all negative. I’ve been thinking of ways to better explain what is going on in the book. In hindsight, I think I left too much up to the reader. Left them to fill in TOO many holes. As a consequence I have made plenty of mental notes (but how many have I already forgotten?). Within a week I need to get back to the editing. I have to finish the hand corrections so I can make the digital changes to print a clean copy for my wife to read before she heads back to work in a few months. That edit I feel will be critical to the success of the book.

Over 100

I had a full weekend with no pressing obligations. So late Sunday evening I do some editing. Not very amazing progress, but I’m over 100 pages with about 80 to go. This will still need an on-screen edit with a few sections printed to edit. A few months ago I didn’t want to do that, but now I feel I should. It will create a better product.

There seems to be little chance that this will be any sort of a success. So far this exercise (the documentary blog) has created nothing worthy of a comment. I’m hoping that I can create enough of a buzz to get people interested in the book - but I know that’s going to be hard because there’s thousands of other people just like me trying to do the same thing (but this is probably a whole other topic).

But I’m not giving up - at the least I’ll be able to say I wrote a book that is worthy of being paid for. If nothing else it kills time. And if that isn’t a ringing endorsement of the poduct, I don’t know what is!

Pressing On

As is obvious from the date of the posts, I haven’t been at the editing much lately. I just returned to editing the printed copy a few days ago. I mentioned it previously - personal life issues have come into play. So much that I almost didn’t want to return to it. I had gotten out of the routine of working on it. One of the biggest factors for me returning to it is that I have set my mind that I’m going to finish this.

Though, I’m done setting schedules - I’ve blown everyone I’ve made, so there doesn’t seem to be a point to doing it - it just makes me frustrated.

I still like what I read and like the ideas I come up with on the edits. I can see where you can constantly edit something - making it better and better, changing things around. I think I’ll have one more draft after this and it’s off to the printers. If I play with it too much I’ll just mess it up - and put in too many plot lines. It seems that if this doesn’t make it to a published work it will be from lack of time to devot to it as opposed to the quality of the work. I like it and think it may be something decent.

I may have lost my outside editor. She hasn’t touched her copy since last year? And only made it through the first few pages. At this point I think I’ll print off a clean copy post this last editing round I’m doing. I’ve changed a lot - so it will make much more sense to her AND be closer to the finished product. Though I wonder if she’ll look at that one either? It’s not really her preferred type of reading - plus it is closer to work than pleasure

Page 72 - the edit continues

I’m really into the meat of the edit now. The original works flows pretty well, so for the most part it’s just adding to and clarifying the story. As opposed to earlier when it was a lot of reorganization.

One bit that worries me - the lack of a professional outside editor. Being so involved with the book, I fear that I mentally fill in blanks in the plot. Points make sense to the creator, but maybe not to someone else.

The only other person on this is my wife, but she’s only about 4 pages into the thing. It’s not her particular flavor of writing. I’m sure that if her husband hadn’t written it - she would not be reading it. So I’m sure it’s hard for her to get motivated to read the thing in the first place. PLUS - a while ago I told her there were some pretty massive revisions to the text - which would make her take on the story different.

She suggested that she wait to do her edit until I had complete mine and given her a print of draft 4. I don’t like that idea for two reasons. I’m a bit of a cheapo, so the 182 pages I had printed for her would go to waste. And the larger of the two - it would add a great deal of time to the whole process. I tend to start a lot of creative projects, but never finish them - and I really want to finish this. But I’m afraid of it dragging out so long that I just give up.

Additionally - in the back of my mind I think that I have a shot of writing for a living. I don’t want to work in an office all my life - it’s just not meant for me. So I’d like to get paid for doing something I love and enjoy - not just something I’m good at. This way of thinking is probably counter-productive to the traditional model of creative success? I’m not sure. Hopefully I can figure out how to use this line of thinking as a motivator - only time will tell.

A Long Overdue Update

Clearly in terms of a regular chronicling of the efforts - I have fallen off. This does not necessarily mimic the progress of the GIANT - but as of late there has been a big slow down in the editing. Here I will provide an update as to where the work stands. Then step back to the last update and fill in the gaps. A flashback sequence of sorts.

CURRENT STATUS: Being reviewed by two people (including myself). This is the first comprehensive printed draft of the work.

FLASHBACK: September 2007. I have given up on the idea of having the book published in 2007. The possibility of having a completed manuscript seems unlikely as well. It probably seems best that I keep working at it regularly - no sense in putting pressure on myself to finish something that no one is paying me for. If the thing is primarily for me - then my primary goal should be enjoyment.

Through October and November the editing went. The latter portion of the book is much easier for me to read - I had clearly found my voice when initially writing by that stage of the book. There are certainly other sections where I wonder how that slop was put onto a page. So it sped up - and by the beginning of November I had completed the second full draft of the GIANT.

I will say that this on screen edit was not as complete as it could have been. I knew there would be the printed comprehensive edit - so I left for my future-self particularly tough passages to work out. And while a lot of the stinkers had been worked out, there were definitely some still hanging around.

Look for the assemblage and editing of the printed draft shortly

Once Again, I’m Feeling Positive About the Book

I’m still working on the first chunk of the book. Recently I printed and edited this first piece - which was greatly needed. When I returned to the computer I still felt a little aprehensive about how good it would be.

The trouble is that I don’t want to give too much away in the beginning, even though lots of wacky things are going on. They’re explained as the book goes on, but if this first part is too confusing for people, they’re not going to want to keep reading in the hope that things will get better.

But I’ve made a shift in direction as I’m going through these edits that I think will help to pull everything together. My hope is that people will buy into the events that are taking place if they don’t quite understand them.

But having no real experience or training in this type of writing I don’t have much to draw on to make this all happen. I can dream up a good story, but formatting it in such a way that makes sense and is entertaining is fairly difficult. Maybe for my first major creative writing effort I should have written a few short stories?

There’s no turning back now though.

Outside Factors

I’ve purposely kept out all other aspects of my life from this project (written in a blog, I’m not sure if this really should be called a documentary). But there are several things besides my writing ability and work ethic that will help determine the outcome of this effort.

I purchased an older house a few years back. Beyond the normal issues that older house bring with them, the house had not been given regular maintenance for a number of years. I’ve also been working to convert the basements and kitchen spaces into rooms that look nice (as opposed to old and depressing). This has required the majority of my free time.

My wife is in graduate school and working full time, so I’ve taken on most of the joint tasks. I’m also studying for a series of exams that will benefit my professional (completely unrelated to writing) career.

Each hour that I am not at work then becomes a precious thing. Three major tasks, now, take up most of my time: studying, working on the house, and writing. Along with that are everything that comes up with life. It had become very easy lately to not work on the book.

Then there are occasions when I have no confidence in the book, so it almost makes sense for me not to write the thing. It would be very easy just to give up on the whole project. The one reason I haven’t done so is that I have a closet full of unfinished projects and I’m tired of wondering if I could ever be anything. So I keep plugging away.