I have now revised my 84,000-word first-draft novel into a 115,000 word second draft. And I’m not done yet. 🙄
Getting close, though! Goal is to get this draft done by October 31. Then I have to write a short story.
Another week of solid work done! I completely rewrote a chapter. The new version turned out to be far more complicated than the original, so it took some time. I also partly re-wrote and completely revised another chapter.
I’m looking forward to getting back to work tomorrow morning. After struggling with this novel for over a year, I feel like the work is going well at last.
For now, I’ve stopped worrying about marketing my other books, in an effort to focus all my energy on this one. This has resulted in plummeting book sales, but if that’s what it takes to get the next one finished, I’ll do it.
Oh and that short story I mentioned a couple of weeks ago? The novel wouldn’t let me spend more than a day on it. This novel wants to be done. I’ll work on the short story in a couple of weeks.
Please check your voter registration. If you’ve been dropped from the rolls, the advice I’ve heard is to seek a provisional ballot. Please vote!
I got through some tough work last week, but by Friday the political situation left me in a dark place. To counter that, I spent Saturday and Sunday away from social media and from news sites. Wow, do I feel better! I also had a productive weekend writing. One more chapter has been re-written and I have a solid plan for how to tackle the next chapter.
Not since my first novel do I remember revising a novel as much as I’m revising this one! And yet the plot is the same.
This draft feels like a “second first draft” if that makes any sense. I’ll definitely have to put it through another draft, but that should be far faster, once I get this version done.
Please check your voter registration, and please vote.
The short version: Progress has been slooowww.
The long version:
My big project this year was to finish writing and then to publish two new novels, conceived as a two book series with potential for more depending on the market. I don’t want to say much about the content at this point, beyond the general description of far-future high-tech science fiction.
I conceived this project as something I could accomplish fairly quickly. To that end, I wanted both novels to be relatively short, because short is faster to write, faster to edit, faster to layout in ebook and print editions.
Well, none of that worked out!
In early July I got feedback on book 1 from my freelance editor — and ouch! Her critique was harsh, but entirely fair. I’ve been revising since then. The overall plot is essentially the same. Mostly I’ve been working on the characters, changing their roles and developing subplots to add interest to the story. I think it’s greatly improved. It’s also a lot longer! And I’m not done with this draft yet. Given that it’s already October, and I need to stop work on the novel to write a short story that’s due all too soon, I’m not going to be able to get book 1 out this year as I’d originally planned. But hopefully it’ll be ready to go early in the new year.
Book 2 is presently an extremely rough first draft around 75% done.
I’ll admit there have been times I wanted to abandon this project. It’s just been so difficult to write — and I’m not even sure why. But I’ve invested too much in it to back out now — and I’ve already got terrific cover art ready to go! — so it will be finished.
Send me positive thoughts!
And do sign up for my newsletter if you haven’t already (the form is over there–> in the right-hand column). That way I can let you know when the the first book is finally out in the world — and I’ll probably do a cover-art reveal for newsletter subscribers, so there’s that.
Today I declared the current novel-in-progress to be a complete first draft. There will be lots of cleanup and revision to follow, but for now, Huzzah!
I’m also over 9,000 words into a no-longer-short story. This one was intended for an anthology, but it’s way past the word limit for that and it’s only going to get longer. So I’ve put it aside for now, though I hope to finish it sometime in the next couple of months.
Meanwhile, I still owe a story for that anthology, so that project will now be priority one.
After that, it will be revisions on the novel I just finished, and then on to a planned sequel. I’m making an effort to worry less and write more. So far, so good.
Home again and happy to be here!
Oddly enough, the football season determined our travel schedule this year — the University of Hawaii’s football season, to be precise. Ron is an avid fan, so when he heard the UH team would be opening the 2016 season in Sydney, we decided that would be a fine time to revisit Australia. But we also wanted to visit family in the Pacific Northwest. The only time we could do that — without Ron missing any home games — was last week.
So we had two-and-a-half weeks between trips, with a friend visiting us in between — and that didn’t leave me much time to write!
What am I working on? Well, the same new novel that I’ve mentioned in recent progress reports, including that last, “final” report. (In this business, “final” is a relative term.)
At last report, I mentioned that I’d sent the manuscript to my agent. He read it while we were down under and gave it a very enthusiastic thumbs-up. But he also had a few suggestions that he thought would enhance the closing sequence. His ideas made sense to me, so I agreed to undertake one more round of revision — and I’m really pleased with the results so far.
I’ve got just a couple more items to address before I send the manuscript back. I’d best get on that.
More soon…
Work-In-Progress Report
I haven’t been posting much lately, have I? That’s because I’ve mostly been writing, with time off for workouts — but even the workouts stopped a few days ago as other chores intruded.
Anyway, as noted in the title, this is my last work-in-progress report for the new novel, because that novel is officially “done.”
Of course, in this business there are many phases of “done,” and there will certainly be more revisions to come, but it’s now with my agent, so that’s a draft!
John W. Campbell Memorial Award
The Hugo Awards, given out at Worldcon this past weekend, were casting shade, but the winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award was also announced during the convention — and no, it wasn’t me. The award went to Eleanor Lerman for her novel Radiomen. Congratulations to Eleanor! As it turns out, Going Dark was tied for second place alongside Adam Roberts’ The Thing Itself.
Recommended Audiobook
Malka Older’s Infomocracy is a near-future look at politics and the way a global system of “micro-democracies” might work — and of course how people, being people, will attempt to game the system. The story takes place during a world-wide election, held every ten years, in which “centinels” — geographic divisions of a hundred-thousand people — are each choosing new leadership, and there is a lot of competition among the various political groups to pick up these new centinels.
The world building behind Infomocracy is absolutely brilliant and at times some of the observations made in the story are quite funny — but be aware that there is a lot of detail as the characters discuss statistics, voting, and political platforms. Think of Infomocracy as a bureaucrat’s thriller. I won’t be at all surprised to see it on next year’s Campbell Memorial list.
The audio narration is by Christine Marshal and I thought it was very well done.
In my last Work-In-Progress Report I said that I’d sent the new novel off to beta readers. I’ve heard back from two so far, and the reports are hearteningly positive, while also including some very useful suggestions.
I’ve already incorporated most of the suggestions from my first beta reader. I’m holding off on the rest to see if the noted issues are a concern with anyone else. That will give me a better idea of how to address them. Later today I’ll start going through the second reader’s suggestions.
I’ve also had a friend read a section of the manuscript for authenticity of place. He made a couple of suggestions, but overall gave it a thumbs-up.
I’m waiting on one more beta reader, as well as that most intimidating personage, my freelance editor, Judith Tarr. I’m sure the feedback won’t be quite so positive from Judy! She’s strict.
It’s all to make the final work the best it can be. For now, I’ll enjoy the praise.
The new novel has taken far, far longer to write than I ever expected — and that’s the reason I started writing these progress reports. They are a means to keep myself accountable, and a means of encouragement.
I completed a really solid draft of the novel in early July, and in my last report I said that I was going through lists of issues that I knew I needed to address. I’ve taken care of most of those, but there are still a few points that need attention. Most of the remaining items are cultural questions — I want to make sure I’m using names and terms correctly. There are also a few concepts I’d like to expand on.
Last weekend, though, I realized I was running out of time. My goal is to get this manuscript to my agent just after Labor Day, which suddenly felt ominously close, given that the manuscript still needed to go to beta readers and my freelance editor. So I decided it was “done enough.”
This was a radical decision, because I have not done a beginning-to-end read-through of the manuscript yet.
My standard procedure is to read through the entire manuscript on-screen, and then read it again in printed version, before I consider it ready to be seen by others. So maybe I’m starting to lighten up after all these years?
Anyway, on Thursday night I sent the manuscript off to three beta readers, and next week it will go back to my freelance editor, who saw the partial last spring. It’ll probably be two to three weeks before I hear back, so it’s much too soon to get nervous. 😉
My original plan was to keep working on the novel in the interim, but I’ve promised a couple of short stories, so I may tackle at least one of those instead. A break from the novel might be the best thing, before the mad rush to address the critiques I’ll be receiving.
In the meantime, we’re expecting Tropical Storm Darby to blow through Maui today and tonight. The rain started before 7AM this morning, which surprised me. I hope we don’t lose electricity!
After finally finishing a solid draft of the novel-in-progress last Saturday, I took two days off from writing, and then commenced revisions (fixes is how I think of it) on Tuesday.
It feels like I’ve been fixing things for a lot longer than six days! That said, I really, really like the way this book continues to come together. To be honest**, I didn’t have a clear idea of where this novel would lead when I started working on it, so it’s a relief to find that I like where I am.
Right now I have two ancillary files in which I’ve listed points I need to address, and I also have Word comments in the main manuscript that I need to take care of, so there’s a lot left to do before I begin a start-to-finish read-through. That said, I feel the manuscript is now completely comprehensible to an outside reader, and that means it’s time for me to start the quest for beta readers and expert consultants. This is always an awkward point for me because I don’t have a writing group to turn to. It makes me realize how much I still miss my early writing group. But I think I’ve had one or two offers from people to read the next one. I’ll have to dig into my email to figure that out.
Onward!
English is complicated. 🙂