Apple Quarantini's

So for the quarantine, I’ve decided to be very productive and knock out book 2, which I’m on the verge of delivering and getting started on a second draft of book 3. I would have been uploading it to Amazon last week, but the gremlins of technology had to step in and convince me to blindly and blithely overwrite what I considered to be a final draft. I’ve had to remake my final draft from the top down.

Now, this wasn’t as bad a thing as it seems. I was at the point of just calling it finished and delivering it all the while wishing I could put more time into it. Considering the amount of time already put into it, I didn't want to remake it again unless I was actually being paid to do it. As I leapt to prepare it for compilation and all, I overwrote it without a care in the world.

So now, I’m taking the time to go back through it and remake it properly. Was it okay as it was? Yes, but I fortunately stumbled into Brandon Sanderson’s lectures on YouTube. Finally, some concrete real writing advice for college students, I believe at Brigham Young. His lectures on putting prose and dialog on the page, and how to make your written word more engaging and (maybe more importantly) why were really instructional and inspiring. I recreated one chapter using what he taught. It was immediately so much better. Like, I hadn’t written it, better. Well, maybe not the much better, but significantly better. I wondered if that chapter would stick out like a sore thumb in the book surrounded by all the other so-so chapters. Now, I don’t have to worry, as I’m going through and cleaning up and revising all the chapters from the top down.

It was easy in one chapter, but doing it through the whole book presents it own challenges—mostly my own limitations—and so there are places I still struggle. Often the solution is K.I.S.S. Simple direct sentences with the right words in them usually fixes (avoids) the problem.

So instead at the front end of October, It will be at the end of October ‘The Dance of All Beings Book 2: The White Dragon’ will be released. I’m actually excited about it. I don’t have any delusions that the books are “great,” but I am proud of how they are turning out, incrementally better than the last.

I also like how the series is developing in its own odd way. I’ve been reading through David Mitchell’s catalog of titles and have found them to be very inspiring on the construction and craft of a novel. I don’t even begin to say what I do is comparable, but his work has opened up new avenues of exploration as Brandon’s lectures had. At first, my books were very much the same book told three times with a gimmick that connected them all. Now, the first book is very much a character study with some magical realism thrown in, the second book is epic fantasy that spans dimensions and pokes at the very nature of the reality of this ‘world system,’ and the third book will be very much an action adventure, rag tag gang/mercenary type of book with fantasy characters. They do check the boxes on the diversity checklists, but they are all male for the most part. I do try, but it’s the story I’m writing.

Book 2 and Book 3, at this point, I plan to self publish. It’s the 4th book I want to submit as my first “real” book, built for selling. As I’ve learned from many a lecture and many an agent video on ‘BookTube,’ there are ways to present a book if you’re not wanting it to be dismissed out of hand by an agent or by a publisher. The premise of 4 is one that can stand alone and can be written from the outset, built to give at least lip service to the “rules.” If they go, “…is there more than just this title..?” I can go, well I have these deep drafts of these previous titles that could use an editor’s polishing touch. In essence, paying me to do a “final draft” on.

Publishing is a game. I don’t necessarily subscribe to it, but there is very much a “first page checklist” in agent’s and editor’s heads of varying detail they use to determine if they are even going to read past that first page. As they look at the stack of 1000 titles that will probably pass over their desk in the calendar year, I understand why they don’t want to even begin with someone who doesn’t have that checklist covered. However, this does tell you why books like Harry Potter and Twilight got passed over a couple of dozen times. They didn’t meet the checklist or they were a ‘dead genre’ at the time. Booksellers—those who actually sell books and talk directly to people who actually buy books as I was (am)—all knew these books were of the moment and of the time and are often aghast that any “well-paid” “professional” that is supposed to know about what readers want to buy would have passed over them.

This is the at the heart of why self-publishing has taken off. One does not have to subscribe to any checklists and write what the heart wants to write. It does come, however, with the fact that readers having been presented with most books adhering to the ‘established rules’ of writing, will often poo-poo indie titles fearing the lack of a “professional” line editing eye will mean its a huge grammar dump that is constructed “poorly.” Many Amazon reviews of self-published titles will reflect some version of, “…the grammar was bad, and that is something I can’t get past…” or “…I felt distanced from the story, and I can’t exactly put my finger on why…” Usually, it’s because the grammar is atrocious and it’s one long draft of filter/weak words. That happens when you’d have to dump a couple of grand for a “real” “editor” to make it “right.” Fortunately for a lot less, you can get a very good draft polished. You have to embrace your grammar nerd, whether they are in your head, or they are someone you can bribe to look over your work. You also have to put out a little money for some form of a digital grammar/tone editor to spot the things your grammar nerd tends to overlook. You also need someone or something to read the book aloud to you. You will find a host of things you never saw before or thought of when you do that. This can get you to a passably polished draft. I hope that’s what readers find in my next books.