With the end of the year approaching, its time to take stock of 2019. Looking back, I had six goals for this year
So, how have I done?
Dark GlassThe new edition went live back in February, and judging from feedback the re-write definitely resulted in a better book. I also released a box-set of the first three novels a couple of months after this.
I did some marketing on the series, and had some success—but marketing is still something I need to work on.
More Dominions booksThis didn’t go well.
Rogue Wolf (Dominions V) was the hardest book for me to write so far. I’m used to books changing as I edit them, but with this one the process involved at least three total re-writes, just to get the story working. Even though I started planning it back in 2018, I only managed to release the finished version at the start of November.
I did manage to publish another Dominions novella, Errant, but the sixth novel has yet to appear. I’m working on it at the moment, though, and I don’t think I’m going to take as long over this one (at least, I hope not).
From September onward, I got new covers for all three novels (and the novella) in the Shadows series. I’d started pulling the novels from Kindle Unlimited, and these books are now available through Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Tolino, and as many other vendors as I could get them into (as well as Amazon).
I think the new covers look great—very eye-catching, and they give a far better idea of what to expect from the books than the old covers did. I also got paperback covers, and these books are now available in physical form.
I’ve yet to release any of the Dominions series as paperbacks, though. I’ve formatted the internal files, but I’m still considering how to get covers done.
I’ve tried, but this hasn’t gone well. I’m not naturally talkative, so maybe it’s not too surprising that I find it easier to ‘write’ through my fingers than through my mouth.
I’ve tried dictating directly into my laptop, and editing mistakes as I go slows me down. I’ve also tried recording and transcribing, but at the moment this process (including time taken correcting the transcription) isn’t any faster than typing. The only advantage has been the ability to ‘write’ while doing other things.
But I’m persevering. I got a great tip from a recent Creative Penn podcast, where Kevin Anderson talked about using dictation in his planning, simply talking through ideas as they came to him. I’ve been giving this a go for a week or so, and it seems to be working. Talking while thinking is slowly getting easier, and I’ve now got loads of ideas down for a new project (more on that in a moment).
I’m going to continue with this strategy for a while. Then I might try dictating some of my blog posts (because a lot of them are me working through ideas anyway), and hopefully I’ll end up feeling more comfortable dictating fiction.
Due to the time spent on Rogue Wolf, I haven’t made any major headway on this. But I have ideas.
Okay—I always have ideas. In the spring I wrote the first draft of a novel that was an attempt at continuing the Shadows series, but it didn’t work too well (didn’t have the same horror feel, being more action/adventure), so I’ve shelved that for the moment. I’ve also thought about writing a series following on from Ghost Stream, the novella I had included in The Power Of Words anthology, and while I have a few ideas I haven’t developed any of them yet.
But I also have a brand new idea for a series, and that’s what I’m working on in my dictation practice. The more I think about it, the more excited I get—and that has to be a good sign.
So, some successes and some disappointments, and lots of lessons learnt. I need to work smarter when writing, and I still need to improve in finding potential readers (which is what marketing really boils down to). As far as sales go, 2019 was an improvement on 2018, but not where I want to be.
But I’m moving forward. And in a couple of weeks, I’ll lay out what I aim to achieve over 2020.
A new story for you.
I’ve been struggling to get stories finished at the moment, but this one came together very quickly—only a few hours from initial idea to the finished thing. I’m not too sure if the ending’s positive or negative, though.
It’s called Always The Same, and you can read it here.
Over November, as my NaNoWriMo project (more details in this post), I wrote the first draft of the next Dominions novel. I was confident I could manage the usual NaNo target of 50,000 words, but I wanted to get the whole thing written. I pushed myself hard, and gave dictation another try for some of it.
I finished, a few days before the end of the month. 125,000 words.
It’s too long. And it’s a mess.
The sections I dictated are extremely stilted, because I still find that words flow better through my fingers than through my mouth. But there are problems with other parts, too. In some sections, I realised my planning wasn’t working, so I had to change things. There are plot holes, and redundant character point-of-view scenes. I’m not convinced by some of the character arcs or motivations. And there’s a lot of repetition and poor writing.
Does this concern me? No. I know that the first draft is not the finished book. It’s a way of getting words on the page. It allows the story to be discovered, and for characters to grow. It’s an opportunity to understand more about themes and ideas that underpin story events and motivations.
The first draft is similar to the artist’s initial sketches, or the musician’s rough demo recording. Reaching ‘The End’ for the first time is really only the beginning.
Now comes the hard work—editing.
I used to see this as a chore. I used to believe that editing involved correcting mistakes, and that I should have foreseen many of these. I used to view writing as the fun, creative part of the process and editing as a mundane slog.
My view’s changed a great deal on this. As I’ve learnt more about the craft of writing and storytelling, I’m starting to understand just how many working parts go into creating a written work, and how it’s impossible to nail even a fraction of these on the first attempt.
There’s the ebb and flow of the story, and the various tent-pole moments that need to meet reader expectations while also being different or surprising in some way. There are the subtleties of character arcs, and the interplay between characters and their settings.
And then there’s the writing itself—not simply grammar and spelling, but the choice of words. There are things to avoid—info dumps, repetition, superfluous description. There’s tone and characterisation. There are times to become more poetic, and times to use more straightforward language. And so much more.
Editing isn’t a matter of correcting mistakes. Editing takes the raw material of the first draft then manipulates and moulds it. Editing turns those rough, messy words into something that will pull readers in, giving them the entertainment and excitement they seek.
Far from being mundane, editing is incredibly creative. A great deal of it is about problem solving, on many different levels. There’s the macro, whole-story work, where scenes are positioned just right, where the feel of the book as a whole is considered, where pacing plays such a vital role. And then there’s the micro, sentence-level work, dealing with minutiae of language. There are levels in-between—structuring each scene or chapter to have its own flow, re-writing paragraphs to ensure the important details are in the right place.
And all these changes have to work together. A sequence of brilliantly-structures scenes doesn’t necessarily tell a great story. Perfect sentences are meaningless if the reader has lost interest in the characters. An exciting story can fail if told in a bland way.
Editing, far more than writing, is what creates good stories. It’s a challenge, and it’s time-consuming—and it’s one of my favourite parts of the whole writing process.
The first draft is just the start. And now, I’m excited to begin the important work of turning those 125,000 words into something I can be proud to release.
I’ve kept to my schedule of a new short story every couple of weeks for a long while now, and it’s frustrating that I’m going to have to break the habit this week. With work on a new book, and various other things, I simply haven’t got a new short ready yet. I’ve got a few things almost there, but that’s not good enough. You deserve better.
But I don’t want to leave you with nothing. So, in lieu of a new short, I’d like to offer you a download link to one of my Dominions shorts.
In a violent wold, can the meek survive?
Ostar knows he’s nothing special. But he’s useful to the crew—not with the violence, but as a look-out. He’s never hurt anyone in his life. He simply wants to keep his head down and live without conflict.
But the crew are dying. Someone is killing them, one by one. And it is only a matter of time before they come for Ostar.
You could buy Animus on all the usual sites, but click here to download a free copy (this link will only be live for about six days). And I’ll be back with a new short story in a couple of weeks.
TW Iain 