Author Updates

I’ve been working through my final edit of book one, A Fool’s Errand. It has started slowly but am now getting to build momentum.

Being my first time receiving an editor’s feedback on a fiction manuscript there’s been a lot of things to get sorted out in regards to how I process the inputs and move through the work.

This weekend has been productive and I feel that I’m making serious headway. I’m behind on my schedule by about 30 chapters but we’ll see what happens from now on it.

I also released my podcast about the writing process, called of course, In All Jest.

Key Work of Late:

• Editing A fool’s errand
• Approving the cover design for Book Two.
• Starting the In All Jest podcast, and I’ve now recorded and published four episodes.

Since the manuscript for A Fool’s Errand went off to my editor, I think I’ve gone crazy only three times so far. I don’t have many finger nails left either 🙂

In truth after a couple of weeks of pretending I wasn’t a writer, I have been busy reading the book on my kindle app, to get a feel for it after a break, and more importantly dug book two out of the cupboard, and started back on it.

I’ve also been planning out a new podcast I am starting all about the process I’ve been through and I’ll talk more about how my first draft became two books in an episode of that. Stay tuned for that.

I’ve been applying the processes I developed through the editing of A Fool’s Errand to put the nearly 90,000 words of book two into shape, and revisiting some characters I introduced there whom I love.

I have three weeks messing about on this before I get the original manuscript back and then it will be a race to get the book ready for my beta readers and proof reader.

I’ve been starting to look at some of the marketing strategies for the launch in September, and while I won’t be making a huge fuss of it, I’ll be wanting to get it out there.

Current plan is a September launch and then April 1 launch for book 2.

Key Work of Late:

• Reviewing Book 2 manuscript
• Outlining the existing book 2 manuscript and filling in some of the missing elements
• Reviewing character profiles and the map
• Sending off a brief for the book 2 cover
• Working out when I’ll release the map and cover for book 1

Well the time has arrived, and today the manuscript for A Fool’s Errand has gone off to my editor. For a first time author this is quite a big moment. It’s both exciting and a little nerve racking.

One of the challenges in transitioning from “I’m writing a book” to “publishing a book” is being able to let go. Handing the book over to someone else to review, edit and critique is a personal challenge, but it’s the only way to get the book done.

There’s always a moment in any project where you have to say that enough is enough and it has to be set free. This week that happened for me and now I get to sit nervously and wait on what comes back.

In fact now I have to catch up on all the things I put off, like fixing some things on this site, reworking my newsletter and in general preparing for publishing.

What happens next?

1. I get to wait for the best part of 2 months for the manuscript to come bacl
2. I then review and re-edit the manuscript based on the feedback and changes suggested
3. When it’s ready it will be going to both my Beta readers and also my proof reader
4. I get that all back within 4 weeks
5. I review and do any editing required
6. It gets published!

I’ll be cleaning up the wiki I have for the series, starting to pull out book 2 and start my story grid spreadsheet on that in preparation for taking the 80,000 odd words already written and building out a full novel from it.

Key Work of Late:

• Editing the book
• Chewing my nails

2020 has been an interesting year so far. I’ve been quiet here because I’ve simply been sprinting towards the finish line.

I interviewed and selected an editor for A Fool’s Errand which made everything much more tangible. An original date for handing over the manuscript has had to be modified a little due to changing availability because of Covid-19.

The great news is that at the end of April, the manuscript will be out of my hands and off with my editor. That will be very strange for me, because there will be nothing I can do for 2 months while it gets treated.

At the moment we believe August will be our publishing month. I’d love it to be earlier but I can’t see it.

When I hand that over it will be time to go back to working on Book 2. Which has a targeted hand over date of Dec 31.

Key Work of Late:

• Editing the book
• More editing
• More more editing
• Interviewing and choosing an editor
• Prepping this site and other materials for publication

Slow progress on the editing at the moment.

Mostly due to the editing and pre-publishing of my new Workbook for my nonfiction, which you can see over at Website Planning Guide.

I am at about 70% editing of the book, and spending time inspecting the nature of my characters at the moment. Especially the secondary characters. Once I opened this process it was like a can of worms. YOU develop one character a little better then you have to check them all.

In the long term it is the right thing to do but progress has slowed because of it.

Key Work of Late:

• Editing the book
• Character reviews
• Adding more into the world wiki I am using to manage all the elements

The last month has been a busy one in matters unrelated to my fiction writing, so there’s been a break from making solid progress.

In completing the latest Non-fiction draft, i set myself a reward for a trip away to reconnect with my novel and get new energy into the editing process.

I never had too much trouble sitting down to write, but the discipline of editing every day hasn’t stuck fully with me yet.

The reward week away on my own to rebuild momentum has been a big success, with my latest editing of A Fool’s Errand at over half the book.

It has been super helpful to get up every day and block out half the day with no other task but editing. That of course included new writing as well.

Key Work of Late:

• Editing more than 50% of the book
• Writing new chapters
• Checking in on key elements of my storyworld
• Finding some inconsistencies and correcting them
• Adding more into the world wiki I am using to manage all the elements

At times it feels like I am back at the very beginning writing the first few scenes, and the end of the tunnel is not even imaginable let alone finding any light there.

The editing and structural fixes, require lots of time resolving world building elements, and components needed in the later books, that I find myself seemingly editing two paragraphs of real words and the rest all background work or research.

After such a lengthy process there are moments where the temptation would be to either just stop all together, although that’s not really my nature, or to rush it out.

The goal with this work is to make it as solid a story as I am capable of at this stage in my writing. That doesn’t mean never bringing it to conclusion by always editing and re-editing, but it does mean working through the story structure and making it as coherent and enjoyable as I can.

Key Work of late:

• Editing scenes
• Finalising key parts of the critical elements in my story, such as the key groups in my world, what they are all pushing for, where they come from etc. While each had a skeleton that helped draft the story, the polish is coming from refining those items and my key characters.
• Adding more world building content to my encyclopedia of my world

Back in the words, and loving it. Currently working through scenes I identified in my structural audit that needed adjustment.
What does that mean?

Well in some cases when reviewing the structure of the story I could see that a key scene’s intensity needed to be raised. Think of a scale, if it was only a 3 it might need to be a 5 or a 6 in the context of where the story was.

Other scenes that just aren’t needed or are wrong for the story need to be re-written or removed.

While it took me longer than I wanted (or expected) to go through the structural editing the value now is very clear. Each day I pick off a scene and rewrite it to make the changes.

It’s so tempting to adjust other parts of the scenes as I read through, such as sentence structure or grammar, but I know at this point that getting the storyline to be complete is the key to getting this book published.

Key Work of late:

• Editing scenes
• Researching dyes, chalk, home cloth making in times gone by
• Adding more world building content to my encyclopedia of my world

Major advances in settling key issues around my protagonist and her story line have been made in the previous weeks, as part of edit 2. This was significant but slow moving.

It has taken me a lot more time to get my head around resolving key issues in fiction, verse my non-fiction. I have been enjoying learning every week on how best to attack the issues, and instead of writing, editing, writing, editing and never getting pleased with the work, taking time to understand what it is that’s wrong with a certain scene or arc is making it much easier to resolve.

I bounce between Robert Mckee’s Story, John Truby’s Anatomy of a story and Shaun Coyne’s Story Grid as my tools of choice in resolving the story elements. Time will tell if it has worked.

Key work of late:

• outlining missing scenes required for antagonists story
• researching elements relating to antagonists story lines
• adding depth to key placements in world affecting book 1 and 2
• editing scene chronology and placement