The Weekend Roundup – 9th June

A day late with this update as I couldn’t log into wordpress last night.

Managed 10,000 words again and the second draft is sitting at 70,600 words.

Links:

  • Iain Banks has died – a sad loss to the world of books. I’m glad I decided to give the Culture books a second go after not being too fussed by Consider Phlebas. I loved Player of Games, and he created one of the most vivid sci-fi universes there has ever been. It was good to have one that gave a hopeful vision of the future instead of despair.
  • 25 Things To Know About Sexism & Misogyny In Writing & Publishing – A great article from Chuck Wending about some of the problems there are and solutions to them.
  • How Much Do We Know? – A new update on Rocketpunk Manifesto that asks a big question.

The State of the Second Draft

As I’m past the half way point in the second draft I thought I would do a more in-depth post about how it’s all going.

First off I am feeling a lot happier with this draft than the first one. I keep a list of revisions I want to make for each one, adding to it as I go along, I don’t like to make changes as I go along. For the first draft the list of revisions notes was big, loads of book ones bullet points and at least a couple for each chapter. This time round there are a few tweaks I want to make to some chapters and alongside some other changes to how I describe some characters and locations.

The story feels like it flows a lot better, I think I’ve managed to arrange it in such a way that it has a good pace but allows for a few quieter moments to show more of different characters. It’s been easier to write as well, having done the first draft and revised outline I’ve known what I needed to do and it has felt right.

So overall I am happy with it. It’s not perfect, far from it, and is going to need a good editor and beta readers to finish it. The plan now is to finish the second draft and then make the few revisions I have in mind, which should take me until mid-July. Then I will hire an editor and put the call out for beta readers to do a story line pass before moving on to the line-by-line editing and improvement.

Still on schedule for a release before the end of the year. I have my own date I am aiming to release it for but whether I meet that depends on how much editing is required. I’m not going to rush the book out if it is not ready, but I’m also going to make sure I don’t over-edit it as well.

Onwards I go.

The Importance of Routine and Making Your Own Creativity

As I make steady progress through my second draft, it is interesting to look back at how I’ve managed to increase my daily word count goals and the reasons I have achieved that.

To start with we must go back to early last year. I’d been ‘attempting’ to write for years, but never made it far thanks to procrastination. I’d decided that it was time to get serious with it, and part of that was deciding I needed to do a little bit of work on the book every single day without fail. This was for a previous book project that was dropped as I felt the current series is a much better story overall.

So I started doing a little bit every day, first on the outline and then when it came to the actual writing I set myself the goal of 250 words a day. I did this at the same time each day, an hour set aside just to write. This was tough at first; plenty of days I would only manage around 100 words. I found it took me a while to concentrate, my attention flicking to anything else apart from my writing. I didn’t feel the creativity I thought I needed to get the words done.

But I kept going, little by little raising my word count until I hit the 250 word count goal each day. Then I raised it to 350 and then 500 once I was reaching the goal each day. What I found was that as I was doing this each day, I was getting into my stride quicker and quicker each day. The creativity was coming as well, more ideas flowing as I just did the process of writing.

That project ended after I’d done the first draft, dropped for my current series as mentioned earlier. I went straight into writing the new one with a goal of 500. Now more than halfway through the second draft my daily goal is 1400 and I’ve learnt a lot.

Having a set period of time each day to write in has helped me get in the habit, because I do it every day I’m mentally ready for it. My brain is ready to write before I’ve even put fingers to keyboard. The quality of the words I’m writing has gone up alongside the quality, and will go up further once I get an editor involved and can analyse my own flaws better.

And the creativity? That came because I gave myself the time and space to write. I tend to have ideas about the books at all times of the day and makes notes about them or email myself so I don’t forget. But the hard graft, the words and ideas that make up most of the writing, they come as I do it.

Give yourself the time and space to write and the ideas will come, the words will flow onto the page if you make it the habit it should be.

The Weekend Roundup – 2nd June

Another week, another 10,000 words.
Second draft now sits at 60,000+ words. Total word count still looking to be around 110,000, and already got a list of some changes I’m going to make before I get an editor involved.

Links: