• Tag Archives book

  • Long, Long, Long Overdue Update

    This place isn’t dead. On the contrary, I have often thought over the past couple years that I have let it go too long without putting anything here. The same goes for the newsletter, but that is another matter entirely. Since it has been nearly two whole years, there is a lot of ground to cover. I’m going to keep this brief for now though.

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  • Draft 3 of By Duty Bound Complete

    Last Saturday I finished Draft 3 of By Duty Bound, which is a lot of progress. I’ve taken a short “break” in the interim, both to unwind from the grueling pace I set and to compile materials I know will help me with the next step: Proof Reading. I keep a checklist of common grammar and spelling mistakes, and a list of common issues I’ve noticed crop up in my writing. For instance, during my last editing pass I noticed that I am using the words “just”, “really”, “simply”, “immediately”, and “actually” far too often. Obviously I tried to fix that during my last edit, however this checklist reminds me to do a very through check by using common word-processing functions like Find and Replace, allowing me to locate every instance of these sorts of mistakes and be sure I fix them.

    As I was editing Draft Three I was helped by a new beta reader who gave me some good comments (in addition to some flattery). Actually implemented most of his suggestions to some degree or another, in addition to fixing some other issues I noticed. There is only one major thing that he pointed out that I haven’t fixed, although not for lack of wanting to. The problem is that he believes (and I agree) one of my characters is underutilized. Unfortunately, correcting that would mean rewriting large swaths of the book and I am so late in the process that it would basically send me back at least 4, and likely more, since I would need to restart editing process.

    In any case, I’m not exactly sure how long it will take me to work my way through this new checklist. It is about 9 pages long, and once I reach the end of it (and do a couple other things) I can say that I am finished with drafts and move on to release candidates. Doubt I will have the book ready by May like I hoped, but am definitely going to have it out by summer. Already thinking about how I want to go about handling the launch (if I want to have it up for preorder or what have you). Those are all business-y decisions, however.

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  • November NaNoWriMo plans, book update!

    Just a short update before I start having regular posts going up here once more (I’ve got a backlog built up that should carry me through November), but I wanted to officially say that I will be participating in NaNoWriMo this year. Everything is already set to go, I just need to throw the switch and start working on it.

    There is one slight caveat: because I will be traveling by car for Thanksgiving I intend to start 2 days early (tomorrow) to make up for the time I will lose driving. For a time I actually considered starting 5 days early (enough to cover the entire duration of my Thanksgiving plans), but ultimately decided that didn’t really fit the spirit of NaNoWriMo.

    To be perfectly honest, I’m a bit nervous about this undertaking. This year hasn’t been the greatest for me when it comes to writing, so I’m a bit wary of my ability to complete this. That said, I’ve found that doing the thing that keeps me feeling safe is rarely the way forward.

    For those that are interested, I am also beginning the next editing pass on my novel. This is less about major story changes, and more just cleaning up what is there, tightening the prose, and so forth. At this point I am committed to launching the book in Spring of 2018, but I am not yet ready to set down a specific date so keep an eye out.

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  • 1st Draft Done, Revisions Begin

    Today I finished the 1st Draft of my book and have started on the major revisions I decided needed to be done in service to the story.

    If you look at my progress graph you’ll see that I am already 32% done, however this is misleading as I was casually working on this already and I track my progress by how many chapters are “done.” In this case the work is not evenly distributed between chapters (a few scenes and even chapters need something approaching a total rewrite, while others need significant work but nothing so serious that I cannot rework what is already there).

    By my estimation, most of the “heavy” work is contained to five or six chapters. No deadline yet because I want to attempt tackling at least one of these to see how long it takes before I make any estimations.

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  • Back in the Swing

    Recently started making progress again!

    I’ve had quite a few thoughts about getting back into work. Keeping up this blog, editing, and writing are things that I know I was doing all at the same time prior to my grandmother’s death, so re-learning how to balance all of it is an interesting experience.

    There are a lot of thoughts I’ve had as a result of everything that’s gone on in the past few months (I figure that is pretty much unavoidable when a family member passes away). Nothing that I would consider unique by any means. Mostly I was taken by surprise by how hard I took it, especially since I felt like I was ready for when this happened. On top of that what I felt was so delayed that at first I didn’t realize it was connected.

    In any case, I’ve been plowing back into work again, and gradually adding more on top of it as I feel able to take it on.

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  • Reviewing Has Begun

    As of the first of this month I am now reviewing my book. Plan to handle one chapter a day (a pace I know I can easily maintain) so this should be done sometime before the end of the month. Once I reach that point I plan to immediately dive into my first revision. The good news is that so far I don’t have that many things to fix (I think, after the first revision my early beta readers may throw up a host of complaints). You can track my progress on the little widget to the right.

    Speaking of, soon I plan to be adding a second project to that widget, one for the novella I’m writing. Currently I am still projecting it to be around 50,000 words, but as I realized my entire first act was wrong I’m no longer completely sure that is the case. We will have to see. If necessary I’ll adjust the estimate once I have a better feel for the project’s scope.

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  • Goodbye 2016, Hello 2017

    So with the end of the year it is time for all sorts of reflection. I literally just got back from traveling YESTERDAY (and thankfully am not going to be away from home for months on end), so I haven’t had an opportunity to really update this blog in over a week. That means I should probably look at this webpage again and simply make sure everything is up to date, that my links all work, and just do basic maintenance.

    In the meantime, how about I look back and see how I did with last year’s resolutions, and come up with new ones for 2017?

    Continue reading → Post ID 1201

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  • Honor’s Path (Book 2) Officially Written!

    Only a few days late, but just north of 8,000 words longer than I expected. I will not jump immediately into editing, but this should put me on target for publishing it sometime next year (again, I am going to shoot for November or December). Don’t have time for a longer post now, but there should be one the Monday following Christmas. I ought to have a lot to talk about then.

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