Publishing This Year

I’ve made the decision to publish a book this year.

That, in and of itself, sounds preposterous. You can’t really ever decide to do something; you simply do it or you don’t. Hell, New Year’s Resolutions are basically that in a nutshell. Anyone can resolve to lose weight, stop drinking, or publish a book (or all three – nothing wrong with ambition, right?). But until you actually do it, it’s just a formless idea. I’ve entered many years with the notion of, “This is the year I get published!” only for it to not come to pass.

So, why should this declaration of publishing intent really be any different?

Well, for starters, I plan to self-publish, likely on Amazon but hopefully elsewhere. That, in and of itself, changes the calculus on how likely publishing will occur. In all previous endeavors, I’ve attempted the traditional routes: querying agents, submitting short stories, etc., and nothing’s panned out. Maybe it’s because my writing’s not good enough – I’d be crazy not to admit there’s a constant bullhorn of self-doubt blaring in my head – or maybe it’s just not been the right moment. Maybe it’s bad luck, bad timing, or a myriad of other reasons that could explain the lack of forward movement in this aspect of my journey.

Regardless of the reasons why, the simple fact is that it hasn’t happened, and there’s no escaping that. One could be bitter about that reality – I won’t lie and say there haven’t been moments where I’ve felt bitter – but bitterness won’t solve anything. It won’t make me a better writer to use it as a motivating factor; if anything, it’ll supplant the real reason I should be writing – the joy of creation – and leave me feeling hollow. I think this type of thing happens often, not just in writing but in society: people don’t get what they want or feel they deserve and grow angry and resentful as a result. But I don’t want to be angry and resentful. I don’t feel that’s productive, nor do I think it’s warranted. I like to believe I’m a pretty damn good writer, but I have to acknowledge that I come to that question from a very biased perspective; perception and truth can very easily be diametrically opposed forces.

But it doesn’t matter if you’re a good or bad writer when it comes to self-publishing. Sure, it matters in the sense that it can affect whether you can become a successful self-publisher, at least in terms of monetary and popularity gain. But in terms of actually putting your stuff out there for someone somewhere to find, the only gatekeeper is yourself. And, as far as I’m concerned, I’m through with being my own gatekeeper. I’m almost thirty-eight now, and it’s high time I shit or get off the pot.

I’m currently working with friends on both a cover and a final pass-through edit for grammatical/spelling errors, as well as a final read on whether there are any glaring problems with the plot and characters. Once that’s done, it’s on to copyright, ISBNs, Kindle formatting, and whatever else I need/want to do before getting it out there. But the only thing stopping me from doing any of that now is myself, and that’s a fairly empowering position to be in.

So, here’s to publishing a book (or two) in 2024. I’m going to do my damnedest to get out of my own way.

A Draft Completed, Another Project to Begin

I finished it! I finished the second draft of Phlox Fall!

This pronouncement comes quite delayed, as it was actually completed a month ago, but for reasons ranging from the craziness of life to my laziness on weekends (and a looooooooong love affair with Horizon: Zero Dawn), I haven’t really been back to write about it until now. It took quite a bit longer than I intended due to a plot alteration I made in the second half of the book that required many scenes to be rewritten from scratch. And even those that didn’t need to be complete rewritten required edits–sometimes substantial edits–to make them cohesive with the rest of the book.

Now it’s on to the first readers. Phlox is the current selection for the Graham family book club (members including my parents, siblings, and their spouses), and we’ll be holding our discussion on it in September. I’m excited to hear what they say, as they’ll be coming at it having not read the first draft; only my wife holds that honor. Some of them will be starting without even a basic detail of the plot, so it’ll be especially exciting to hear their takes having no fore-knowledge of what they were getting into.

So, what does that mean for me?

One, it means it’s time for me to move on to something else. I’ve already started putting together character profiles and doing preliminary research for the next writing project, though how long before I start putting pen to paper (or finger to keyboard, rather) is up in the air.

Two, it means I need to start really considering what I want for the future of Phlox. The practical thing would be to send it through a couple more revisions and start trying to sell it, but the question remains how that would be best done. There’s the traditional route, which I have explored previously when trying to sell my novel Sunshine INC, but I’m also becoming much more interested in self-publishing. Whether I feel ready to dedicate myself to the hard work that would be necessary for that avenue is something I’m still exploring, but I think as time goes on, I will be more open to it. There are still a couple mental hurdles I have to clear, though. One, I need to become comfortable with the notion of spending a decent chunk of change on editors, covers, and the like. Two, I need to be ready to put myself out there and do my own marketing. This will probably be the part I struggle with the most, since in a lot of ways it’ll require as much work, if not more, than the actual writing of my stories, and will in some ways be like a second job. But then, writing should already be treated like a second job, and in many ways I’ve been neglecting that very pertinent aspect of this whole endeavor.

So that’s where I stand now, and where my thoughts and concerns lie for the next few months of my writing adventure. I’ll have more to say soon.

4th Draft of 2nd Draft

How many drafts is too many? Currently I’m pushing the limit on what that number should be, but the good news is I’m over the hump that hindered me in previous attempts.

Bear with me a sec while I throw an info-dump at you.

In 2014-2015, I wrote the first draft of novel. Since then, there have been three failed attempts at getting a 2nd draft off the ground. Now, most rational people would probably give up on the project after that, and since I like to pretend I’m a rational person, that’s exactly what I did. I moved on, and spent my time piecing together several short stories and outlining a couple potential projects.

What I didn’t anticipate was that the work I would do on those short stories and outlining would lead me to reexamine my entire editing and revising process. Through this reexamination, I was able to diagnose the reasons for why the 2nd draft attempts on the novel failed:

1. I had a long laundry list of things I wanted to change from draft 1, a lot of which were major changes that would require some serious overhaul;
2. My previous method of 2nd draft editing consisted of me literally typing out the whole manuscript again, inserting the changes I wanted to make, using the 1st draft merely as a reference point.

With those two things in mind, I decided to delve back into the novel and make a 4th attempt at the 2nd draft, with a few very distinct changes to the above roadblocks:

1. I scaled back massively on the changes I wanted to make, opting instead to keep a lot of the 1st draft elements intact while inserting minor (and a very few major) changes where necessary;
2. I’m editing on the original 1st draft word document, with track changes turned on so I can follow my progress.

So, how do I know this was a good idea? Well, I don’t. And I won’t know until I finish this 2nd draft (if I finish the 2nd draft, but I might have to kill myself if I don’t (not really, of course; I’m not that fatalistic)). But I’ve already made it further in this iteration of the 2nd draft than in all my previous attempts. And unlike those previous attempts, I’m not sitting here drowning in regret and self-doubt regarding what I’ve written and edited so far. It’s a pleasant place to be, and I’m hoping it’s down to the changes I’ve made in my process, particularly on the “editing on the word doc” front.

The editing is still going slower than I’d like, but I haven’t burned out and don’t feel in danger of doing so, which is always welcomed. I’m also confident the speed of my editing will pick up soon for one specific reason: the tense of the first draft.

When I first started writing the 1st draft, I decided to use present tense. This I attribute to the fact that I read City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett right before I started writing, and since City of Stairs is written in present tense, I made the conscious decision to give it a shot to see how I liked it. But about a third of the way through the 1st draft, I realized present tense just wasn’t conveying the right tone and feel I was going for and thus I made the shift to past tense, which I used through to the completion of the novel.

Now that I’m in the 2nd draft, I need to ensure I use the same tense (past, in this case) throughout the whole novel, but since I’m developing that by editing the 1st draft word doc, it means virtually every sentence in the first sections requires revision. Says becomes said, asks becomes asked, looks becomes looked, and so on and so forth.

Good news is I’m almost to the end of the present tense portion of the draft, so that aspect of my revision will be disappearing soon. Bad news is I have a major story change shortly thereafter, so the hard work won’t be done just yet (is it ever really?). But I’m confident in my ability and my tenacity, and besides, it’s not my first time on the editing roller coaster, though it might become the first time I truly love what comes out of it.

New Year’s Resolution: An Addendum!

Okay, so my resolution to write 500 words a day went great through January and February (minus one day when I may have imbibed a bit too many alcoholic beverages). However, as March hit and I found myself in possession of a few first drafts for short stories, I discovered a problem: I don’t have any editing time!

So, that means an addendum to the NYR is in order. It’s a simple one, and one I think will be more conducive to a full writing experience.

Rather than write 500 words a day, I am now charging myself with engaging in writing or writing-related activities (like outlining or editing my work) for at least 1 hour per day.

Much like the 500 words a day challenge, I won’t make the one hour a hard stop. If I go over, then hey, even better. I’m also not going to stop tracking the amount of writing I do in a day when I’m writing, as I’d still like to see definitively how many words of creative fiction I actually jot down this year.

Overall, I think this is a good change, and one that will allow me to not only write, but do pre-writing work (characters, outline, etc.) for new projects and edit any finished drafts I churn out. Speaking of which, I’m currently solidifying the outline for the second draft of a novel, so once that’s completed and I’ve finished editing the shorts I want to take forward, I’m going to dive back into that. It’ll be especially interesting since I’m going to become a dad at the end of May, so who knows where the second draft will be by that point or how long it will take to finish once I have a miniature human to take care of.