Finished Another One

The Love Machine, my latest novel, is done.

Well, at least the not-quite-final draft of it. I finished it this morning, fulfilling my 2017 New Year's goal of having it done by June. It took about 18 months.

Because I've been reading each chapter to my writers' group a few weeks after completing them, and then going back and polishing, the book should need very little work further work, I think. I'll take a week or so off, and then do a final read-through and polish.

My next goals?

1) I have two open short stories. I'll finish one of them. Should take 7-10 days.

2A) Polish query letter for The Love Machine.
2B) Send The Love Machine  out to agents. Maybe start in a month.

3A) Go back to novel #3, which I need to make one semi-major change to. May take a few weeks for that. Otherwise, I think this one is good to go.
3B) Novel #3 also needs a title! My various working titles (most recently, Out of Place) have not worked for me.

4) Start on novel #5. I have a really killer premise and am ready to start. Maybe after Labor Day.

Writing Goals for 2017

Here are my writing goals for 2017:

1) Finish revisions to my short story, La Jolla Ballroom, and submit for writers' group anthology. This one is done, I did the final revisions this morning.

2) Finish current novel, The Love Machine, by June. I think I'm over halfway done at this point. I've been doing editing and revision of each chapter after reading it aloud at my writers' group, so it (hopefully) will need little revision once I get to the end. June's pretty ambitious, but I should be able to manage it.

3) In January, complete beta reads for manuscripts. I'm beta reading two novels for fellow authors in my writers' group.

4) Revise third novel (probably starting in June). Also, come up with a good title for it. My third novel, finished a couple years ago, languishes in limbo. It's done but needs a a major re-write.

5) Continue work on short stories, including Steader, and others as time permits. I have a short story I started a few months ago titled Steader that I think could be really good. Just need to finish it! Plenty of other ideas for stories floating around too, nothing too well-formed, but lots of things with potential.

5A) But only write short stories if it is something new. I feel like I've gotten in a little bit of a rut with my short stories--some of my recent ones have seemed too similar in tone, and too easy for me to write. So I've determined only to write short stories that will stretch my writing muscles in some way. For La Jolla Ballroom, it's using period dialect from the 1930s. For Steader, it's writing a tense thriller.

Writing Goals for 2015

Here are my writing goals for 2015:

1. Work on super-secret project (more details to come in 2015, I hope!)
1a. Polish short story for super-secret project. Already written, but for some reason I just cannot get this thing edited! I really need to work on it.

2. Finish edit of novel manuscript. This is my third novel (current working title: Out of Place), which is in draft form but needs some editing and polishing. I don't think it actually requires that much work--but I do need to sit down with it for a couple months and get it into shape.
2a. Send third novel out to agents.

3. Edit Writers of Chantilly anthology in a more timely fashion than I did with last year's!

EITHER 4a. Edit second novel, and try sending it out to agents again;
OR 4b. Research, begin writing fourth novel. I'm fairly certain what I'm going to write about, just need to get some stuff figured out before I can start.

Thank God Almighty, I'm Done at Last

Tonight I finished the first draft of my latest novel.  It came in just short of 45,000 words (and after edits will probably land at closer to 46,000), which I think is about right for an upper-middle grade novel.  In a macro sense, I think finishing it now really shows how much better I'm getting as a writer.

First novel: Took 24 months, had some good scenes but frankly, was terrible overall.

Second novel: Took 18 months, both I and my writing group, the Writers of Chantilly, judged it to be pretty good, I think, but no interest from agents.

Third novel (this one): 14 months, at least for the first draft.  It may take another 4-6 weeks for revisions, but honestly, I don't think it needs that much more work.  For one thing, I've already read the first two-thirds or so to the group, and I always do my best to get each chapter in good shape before I read it to them.  So, I need to give the final one-third a hard revision, make a few adjustments to the early chapters to account for unforeseen developments later in the book, and give it all a final go-over with 400-grit sandpaper.  Final time elapsed will probably be 16 months.

So, I'm getting faster, more confident, and hopefully better.  I have a good feeling about this book's prospects for interest from agents, publishers, etc.  I think the hook for this one is clear, the characters well-drawn, the pace is quick.  I just hope the professional publishing world agrees!

Again With the Importance of Writing Groups

So I was on vacation last week, and the week before that was just crazy, and maybe the week before that I'd been kind of lazy.  But for whatever reason, I hadn't written in my WiP for three weeks.  I was really dreading getting back to it, too.  After you haven't worked on your project for a while, it's hard to get back into the groove.

But on Monday I went to my Writers of Chantilly meeting, and I came away charged.  Ready to return to my work.  Maybe it was the positive comments I received on my latest chapter.  Maybe it was being around other writers excited about their work.  Maybe it was simply thinking about the writing process.  Whatever the reason, last night I sat down at the computer and made a number of changes to my novel I've been meaning to for a while, and got in some actual writing as well.  All in all, a solid night, and I'm still ready to write again tonight.

So here's another reason we could add to the list of why you, a writer, should definitely be in a writer's group: getting back on track when you've lost your way.

How Often Should You Write?

So after a week-long vacation, and several extremely busy days after getting back, I've finally returned to writing on a daily basis this week.  The first couple days were tough, but now the words are flowing.  I'm struck again, as I have been in the past, how important it is to write every day.

For the novelist, it's critical.  You simply can't get any momentum going if you take days off between writing sessions.  When you take a couple days off, you have to read over what you've previously written, re-calibrate, take a few paragraphs to warm up, and only then does real writing come out, maybe.  You'll never finish that way.  But write daily, and each new session flows beautifully.  Your mind has been working on the problems of the previous session and you start exactly where you left off previously, with new ideas and energy.

I'm not the only one who thinks this.  Stephen King's a big believer in writing every day. Raymond Chandler prescribed four hours a day for writing, and even if he couldn't think of anything, he forced himself to sit in the chair and look out the window.

That's novelists.  Surely other types of writers are different?  Well, maybe, but I'm not so sure.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe started writing a poem every day when he was a teen-ager, and continued the habit throughout his life.  It worked out pretty well for him.  I bet most successful writers make it to the writing desk daily, or nearly so.

If you miss a day here and there, it's probably unavoidable.  Don't sweat it.  But try to write at least six days every week.  Avoid missing more than one day in a row.  That's how you keep your brain bubbling.  Here's a secret: Writing is not the product of inspiration; inspiration is the product of writing.

Work in Progress update

Last night at my writers' group I read chapter four of my WiP, which I have given the working title of "Piece."  I was worried the writing wasn't as smooth as what I normally read, and maybe it wasn't.  Nevertheless, it got quite a reaction.  The chapter ends a cliff-hanger and members were asking if I'd brought Chapter Five with me.  A good sign, I think!

Oddly, the writing is coming easily in my WiP though I still don't have certain basic parameters down, like who exactly should narrate certain chapters.  Still, it's coming together, and my writing group is a big encouragement.

WiP reception

So last Monday I read the first chapter of my current WiP to my writers group, the Writers of Chantilly.  Very promising!  Everybody seemed to enjoy the first chapter, and one person wrote that they "loved" one of the characters I introduced.  And that was one of the written comments, which I put more credence in--verbal comments often tend to be more positive but generic "good job"-type remarks.

Next Monday will be Chapter Two.  Hopefully I'll get as good a reception--or, almost as good, a worse reception but with concrete advice for improving.

Background research required?

So I've been having a fairly unproductive past week or ten days in writing my current WiP.  Partially due to a great number of financial and automotive problems that have required my attention, but mostly, I think, because I really wasn't sure where the story was going.

Oh, I have an ending in mind, although fairly vague.  And the 10,000 words I've written so far are a good start.  But I wasn't quite sure how I was going to reach the end from where I am now.

The root problem, I think, was that I didn't quite have a handle on all the characters' motivations.  So today I sat down and worked out what each character is up to.  Just three or four lines (one or two for minor characters).  I also wrote up a page with details on the setting that I didn't have straight in my mind.

I believe this will break the logjam.  Already I know what I need to write tomorrow night.  And even beyond that, I have a much better conception of where the story is going.

As a story with a lot of fantasy elements, I assemed my WiP wouldn't need research because it's all in my imagination.  Wrong!  It does need research--only the source is my own mind.