Thank you for over 1,000 views! When I started this blog, I don’t think I expected to hit this many views in less than a year. Certainly not before I had a book out. So thank you for reading, whether you follow me here on WordPress or you follow my links from Facebook, Tumblr or Twitter. Please keep reading, I think the best is yet to come!
I have been doing a lot of research into this business of getting my book out there. I have the online channels covered for ebook distribution, but another aspect is the physical book. Bookstores aren’t dead yet, and I think it’s short-sighted to write them off. I’ve looked up a few bookstores in Montréal and even contacted one for details on their consignment policy.
With this in mind, I ordered business cards so that when I leave my book for bookstores to consider, I have a professional way of letting them get in touch with me with their decision. Granted, the book is number one, and I will put my sweat and tears into it to make it the absolute best it can be. I also want to present myself as a pleasant professional who would be a pleasure to work with. The cover of my book isn’t the only thing being judged, and I don’t want to walk in looking disheveled and scatterbrained, making them wonder if I’ll be able to deliver orders on time or be unreliable in getting back to their messages or phone calls.
I’m selling myself as much as I’m selling my book, and first impressions are quite important.
I managed to not write a single word for Destiny last week. Granted, I covered lots of ground on Yggdrasil and wrapped up my second draft. This is perhaps the danger of running two projects at once: one may get casually tossed aside so that the other can make a huge leap forward. Since Yggdrasil is now on standby until I get a new proof to attack, this week’s goals are much simpler:
Lots of work on Destiny to make up for having tossed it aside last week. I cannot afford to lose any momentum here, I need to keep moving forward and get this story to some sort of suitable ending. I can’t start this thing over anymore, unless it’s to revise a first draft. I’ve got a good head start, and I’m ready to build on it.
The second draft of Climbing Yggdrasil is finished!
I had broken one chapter into three, in order to give the events of that chapter time to build and breathe. I really struggled with the second and third of those chapters, then I went off the scripted path and discovered meaning there, I ran with it, and it worked.
I came up with a “final” version of my blurb to send off to Ellie for the cover. Now that I have a page count, she can set the spine so that my next set of proofs has the proper cover.
I’m excited. There’s a vague sense of worry that maybe this excitement is premature. Maybe, once I read the second proof, I’ll see that this isn’t that much of a leap forward, that so much more work needs to be done. That’s tomorrow’s trouble, though, and the beauty of drafts is that I can take all the time I need to get it right.
I’m going to have a new proof copy in my hands within a few weeks! With my beautiful cover!
It’s not looking very good, is it? What that line of zeroes doesn’t tell you is that I’ve been hard at work on finishing my second draft of Climbing Yggdrasil and that I’ve had a cold the past few days and have been going to bed ridiculously early, so no writing. Project Destiny will pick up and move forward at full force once Yggdrasil’s draft is finished and sent off for printing. Next week’s numbers should be much more inspiring!
There’s always a chance I finish the Yggdrasil chapters early and have time this weekend to bring those numbers up a bit.
I’ve gotten some feedback, and I’ve used that to come up with something I don’t hate.
Synchronizers are not supposed to awaken.
The comatose psychics who provide starships access to the central network sleep their lives away in coffin-like tanks. Their minds are broken by the process that creates them. This gives Captain Kandace Li Renwright some comfort, helping her to overcome her revulsion at the thought of acquiring one.
When Wendell wakes her from her sleep for a chat, she is faced with a pale, emaciated man who can speak into her mind. He claims to know nothing of who he used to be, and wants her help. The answers he seeks cannot be found on the network, only in the meticulous physical records the Corporation keeps. His past is locked in the maximum security facility where he was made into what he is.
Captain Kandace and her crew are about to embark on a mission to recover Wendell’s lost memories. They will bring him ever closer to his ultimate goal: punishing those who stole his life away from him.
I welcome any thoughts or comments. Would you read the book? Is there wording that seems clunky? What would you change? I just want to float this out there for a little while, and come back to it this weekend to settle on a final version, hopefully one that greatly resembles this one here.
I bought my goals notebook with only the best intentions. Then “the road to hell,” yada yada yada, and here we are. Goals remain an excellent motivator for me, and so I am redoubling my efforts on that front.
My goals for this week include finishing the second draft of Climbing Yggdrasil (as well as the blurb), making some serious headway on Destiny, and keeping this blog up-to-date with my latest goings-on. I put a sticky in my notebook so that I can write tally marks for those goals with low numbers as I complete individual tasks.
The second draft of Climbing Yggdrasil is all but finished. What remains is to fix the ending, which all happens rather quickly in the first draft. I did not build the suspense and let the events of the finale ring out as much as I should have. Upon reviewing the final chapter, I have found that it needs to be broken up into at least three chapters.
Each of the colors except blue is getting its own chapter. The blue sections represent a different point of view that occurs at the same time as the action in the pink, green and yellow chapters. Notice that the green section takes up half a page, despite being the most important event of the novel. I remember being ready to just get the damn first draft over with, and so I hastily wrote the end instead of giving it the time it deserved.
New lesson learned: laziness in the first draft makes more work for the second. There is no getting away from doing what is necessary.
I drafted a new version of the blurb and have asked a few friends to give me their opinions. When I have taken all of their advice and used it to create a “final” version of the blurb, I will likely post it here and ask for comments. Once the blurb and second draft are finished, I can send the blurb and spine dimensions to Ellie to get a useable version of my cover. Then it’s off to CreateSpace to print up proofs of the second draft! I could have copies of my book with the new cover in my hand by early August!
In the interest of brevity and being better able to tag my posts accurately, I have decided to try to focus on one subject at a time. This means more posts! This also means categories will now contain more accurate posts going forward, so that I (readers) can find exactly what I’m (they’re) looking for instead of a bunch of posts covering two or three topics at once. This move has been inspired by my previous post, which I reblogged from Winter Bayne (thanks again!).
Winter Bayne was kind enough to share these useful pointers on blog design. I’ll be making some changes to mine this weekend.
I am nearly halfway done making edits in Climbing Yggdrasil. Progress has slowed somewhat as I’ve encountered elements that need a bit more work. Plot inconsistencies were easy enough to fix, but altering entire scenes and adding new content are a bit more difficult. Also, the blurb is tormenting me, though I have come up with a new angle of attack.
I had been feeling a bit off about not having done any writing lately. My efforts to write Project Destiny in a journal had ground to a halt. It had been difficult from the outset; I would spend most of a train ride home (which takes a little over an hour) writing only to discover that I had 600 or so words. Words I had to count. Writing in Scrivener is much more rewarding because of session targets. Every time I open the program, my goal is to write at least 1,000 words. Two days of writing have yielded a total count of over 6,000 words: the prologue and first chapter. I printed up a calendar to have a handy motivational tool pinned to the wall next to my desk. (It’s Wednesday evening as I write this, so no word count yet. Check the sidebar for more up-to-date progress.)
I also learned from my proof copy of Yggdrasil that I wanted an image to separate blocks of text, because images won’t be missed if breaks fall at the ends of pages, be they print or digital. This time I didn’t have to go hunting around online for an appropriate one: I’ve had eight of Destiny’s symbols tattooed on me for years now. This book (as I expect there will be more than one) will use the orange symbol. In the world of Destiny, orange represents the human soul, language, blood ties and oaths.
Getting proper narrative out again is wonderful. Editing remains, of course, rewarding and an integral part of the writing experience. No one wants to pay to read a rough draft. But let’s face it, spilling out those words is just more fun, especially when we get into the flow and they seem to tumble forth so easily. This is another advantage of using Scrivener over a pen, I can almost keep up with my thoughts. I don’t write longhand nearly fast enough, and when I try the words become an unintelligible jumble that I would find difficult to edit.
It feels weird to be steaming on ahead without being part of Camp NaNoWriMo, which is going on currently. There’s no reason why I couldn’t sign up now, though.
I neglected to mention this last week, but I created an author page for myself on Facebook. My posts from here are Publicized there, and I post random status updates here and there between posts. You can also check the sidebar here for the latest updates.
Lukas Rowland 