Processing . . .

Every writer has a process, whether it's winging it, brain storming, or outlining.  I've never been good with outlines.  I hated doing them in school.  Most of the time, I cheated and did them afterward. 

Oddly, doing the outline afterward actually works for me to track continuity.  I also keep a timeline, a family tree, and a character list with details.  Oh, and journal upon journal upon napkins and notebooks and scratch paper of notes.  And every single manuscript I've ever printed and every copy I've ever worked on saved and dated on my laptop and two external drives.  (Think I'm paranoid?  I did work in I.T.  Things fail.  Files disappear.)

The gist?  Never throw away anything you've written and write notes on whatever is nearby.  But pencil on toilet paper needs to be copied onto something else if you ever want to read it again.

For the most part, I wing it.  I've had the story in my head for a long time, after all.  However, I was talking with a friend yesterday and rediscovered a problem I'd had when I hit a certain point in the plot.  And, of course, I can't say what it was without spoilers, but it stopped the story dead. 

I've said before that this all started with a nightmare I had.  That nightmare was the driving force for the original tale when it was about witches and witchcraft.  Around this time, I had read THE MAGIC COTTAGE by James Herbert and it influenced how I shaped a story around my dream.  It made sense and I wrote off and on for many years.

As an adult, I shifted away from the witchcraft theme and decided to go with vampires.  I don't have a clue why.  I don't know where Eric came from initially.  I do remember sitting at the diner where I waited tables thinking about this handsome vampire named Eric L'Blanc who fought in the French Revolution under Napoleon Dynamite.  Wait . . . Tater Tots.  No, just Napoleon (he's a Ziggy Piggy).


When I realized that - A.  I knew nothing about France or the French Revolution, and - B. I'd have to research France and the French Revolution, I chucked that idea.  There are iterations around here somewhere in which Eric L'Blanc exists.  But he was short lived.

Maybe if I hadn't winged it, the story would have been written sooner.  But I don't think so.

So instead, he became Eric Ravenscroft, the last name being inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, Lara Croft, and THE RAVEN (also, Jonathan was originally able to shape shift into a Raven, which I took out but wanted "Raven" in there somewhere, and I also don't know where Jonathan came from - neither were in the original story).  I still wanted a war veteran, so I had to pick between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.  Have I ever mentioned that history was my worst subject?  Because history was my worst subject.  Thankfully, as I dug into Civil War research, I found that I actually enjoyed it.  And one on of these days, I'll do a blog post about my brief stint as a Civil War Reenactor, which is touched upon in the acknowledgements in the book.  

I've derailed from my originating subject.  Which just illustrates that I write as I go and don't plan it out.

SO - my process.  I wing it.  When I get stuck, I yank on my hair, bang my head on my desk, and stare at my screen and usually mutter curse words.  Not so much the first two any more, but the last two happen a lot now that my brain goes on strike.  Because I got stuck so badly in THE ARRIVAL, I tried something different for Confessions.  I created flash cards.

The initial batch contained major plot points and the second batch was for secondary plot points, and for character and world building.  I spread them out so I could see them all and started grouping them together and stacking until I had an order and a direction.  It worked really well.  I had too many points to get them all into Confessions, so I divided them and started over with a pile for Confessions and the leftovers for COMS. 

The flash cards worked for the overarching story that developed in THE ARRIVAL, but they wouldn't have worked for THE ARRIVAL itself.  The problem I ran into needed to be thought through and dissected.  The whole story initially revolved around that nightmare, and I reached a point where I realized the nightmare was missing.  And I couldn't figure out how to tie it into the new world I'd created with vampires instead of witches around my central character.  Essentially, I had half the book written without even knowing where I was taking it and I had no map.

Thus, several candlelit nights and many hours of hair pulling and head banging and cursing at my laptop ensued.  I'd write in the story itself or I'd open a new window and just type out ideas.  I'd space out in the car driving and hurriedly jot down notes at traffic lights.  Eventually, I got there.  It wasn't smooth sailing and I got stuck a few other times to answer the whys and hows of the situation (every writer should be able to answer Who, What, Where, When, Why, How, AND get the character through the door - a metaphor I read about as a way to see the plot:  character starts on one side of the door and winds up on the other side at the end via the plot), but I did it.  Frankly, I'm surprised it worked at all, let alone as well as it did.

I don't have structure.  I don't make myself write X number of words per day.  I don't necessarily do research ahead of time (I'll just write what I want, highlight it for research, and go back to it later).  I let the creative process work at its own pace.  Sometimes I pause to sketch out a character or a weapon or add to the family tree or timeline.  But my mantra is to write when I want to write.  If I force it, I'll end up deleting what I wrote.  It's a waste of time.  I learned that several times.  

For a lot of it, I just got lucky.  Or maybe I'm not giving my brain its due credit and somehow I knew what I was doing thanks to research and creativity.  Either way, I put together a well-written, addictive, and cohesive story that many of you are enjoying or have enjoyed

Editing. It's important.

Even the best authors miss something here or there.  I read, early on, that you should have an editor check your manuscript at least once prior to querying agents or self-publishing.  If you're a writer, you'll see it everywhere - get an editor who is not your mom  and not your teacher.  They may be great at grammar, yes, but there is so much more to editing than just grammar and typos.

For the record, my mom did help me edit.  And she's read my book more than anyone else, not counting myself.  I've read it hundreds upon hundreds of times.  It's been ten years.  It's a commitment.  If you love it, make it so others will love it, too.  And I had other grammar nerds read it.  But, I did hire a professional editor.  He was a literary agent who edited on the side.  And it was the best investment I could ever make.

You could be the best writer on Earth, but you're not going to publish a polished jewel without some work.  That can be hard to accept for some people.  Even I thought my manuscript was a masterpiece before I realized it was a masterpieceofcrap.  I cringe so much when I see the copies I sent out to those first few agents.  I'm sorry for their eyes.

My professional editor did what you might expect - checked grammar, caught typos and misued words, and so forth.  He also brought a wealth of knowledge of what readers want, type of voice, and how to tighten the narrative.  I gave him a 118,000 word manuscript and he gave it back with 10,000 fewer words.  He turned whole paragraphs into sentences.  He cut out unnecessary components that muddied the scene or dragged the story.  He cut out exposition and pointed out areas or characters that needed action or depth.  In short - he was amazing.

He wasn't cheap.  But he was worth every penny.

He told me I was a beautiful writer, not as in physically beautiful, but that I had a flowery type of prose that was beautiful to read. The bad?  People generally don't like to read that in long stretches.  You need to lay out the story so it's easy to read and pepper in beautiful writing and metaphors and comparisons.  It wasn't easy and I was nervous about what I'd get back from him.

When I got my edited manuscript back, I was surprised in several ways.  One - it wasn't polished.  This was round one editing and it was a choppy, grammatical mess.  But it was a mess easily fixed, and polishing was my job.  What surprised me most was reading my story for the first time with new, fresh eyes.  I had no idea what he'd cut or added or changed, so it was the closest to reading my book for the first time that I've ever gotten.  It was awesome.

Sure, things were cut that I added back in and some things were cut that I missed, but when I read it, it made sense, so I left them out.  In the end, the author is the creator and the author chooses what stays and goes.  I learned a lot from him.  In fact, while he was whittling away at The Arrival, I applied what I'd learned to Confessions of the Second Born.

Confessions was 176,000 words when I finished the first draft.  After two rounds of editing utilizing what I'd learned, I cut out 68,000 words.  The manuscript currently sits at 109,000 words and reads so much better than it ever did.  Until a few months ago, I hadn't touched it since early 2015 and hadn't done any serious work on it much further back.

The author has the final say and only the author can decide how much editing to do, but if you love your project and want to put the best out there for the reader, I strongly advise putting in the extra effort and investment.  The Arrival would not be the tightly written book that it is today without my pro-editor.  But I can't discount the assistance from mom and beta-readers.  Everyone who helped, HELPED. 

Grammar nerds and detail-oriented people are excellent for catching those early, obvious errors that your eyes gloss over because it's the 167th time you've read that page.  And beta-readers are supremely important in getting that early reader information - what works, what's confusing, what characters need something, how this or that is actually perceived versus how you wanted it to be perceived, and how the plot evolves.  Professional editors have that inside edge and know what the industry wants and what readers on the whole generally want.  Everyone plays a role and everyone is important.

But the most important thing is doing it.  Asking for insight.  And listening to it, even if you don't like it.  My editor had largely positive things to say, but I didn't like everything.  For example, I had to change the title, the name of the forest, and the name of the town due to a large, commercially successful book series that I hadn't read.  Since I was 13 years old, the town had always had another name.  And I had to change the opening line.  The opening line is the one thing that had never changed since I first wrote it.  But, once I changed that line, I realized that the book would flow better if I added a new chapter one and cut other scenes out of latter parts of the book. 

Hence, the first chapter as it is - which, I understand now is confusing and I didn't see it before - cut down on exposition later on in the book and allowed me to insert an active scene.  Show, don't tell.  After I got my manuscript back, I cut another 4,500 words from it, even after doing my assigned work to flesh out this part or beef up this scene, etc. 

There are a few things I'd change now that I've gotten reader feedback, but they're small things and, admittedly, they are things I added after working with my editor.  He might have seen what the readers are seeing and prompted me to make some changes.  Overall?  It was a great experience.  From writing it to editing to criticism to editing to publishing.  That was a decade of my life for a story that's been in my head for nearly 3 decades.  I'm so happy it's out of my head into the hands of people across the country!  And that I'm hearing their theories and their opinions.

The whole experience to this point now is helping me see Confessions in a new light.  Hopefully it'll be a better book for it.  Once it's published, that is.  ^_-