Loving It

This Monday morning, my mind is not at all on this blog, since I’ve just started the next draft of Drudge and am already consumed by it. So, rather than half-assedly flap my gums about some writing-adjacent issue or other, I’m going to whole-assedly, and hurriedly, flap my gums about how much I love what I’m doing.

After a month of not peeking (much) at my first draft, and having already incorporated the large-scale changes suggested by alpha readers, I can now begin to sprinkle in those creative flourishes, cut out any repetitious words and phrasings, finesse the prose for accuracy and flow, and generally whip the manuscript into shape.

At a pace of around 2,500 words a day, and being that Drudge is a fairly short novella, this means I should have a draft ready for beta readers by next Sunday afternoon. And by that point, the last of the heavy lifting will be done and I can turn my mind to other bits and pieces, such as tweaking the blurb and the cover art.

So yeah, that’s it. Seven whole days with no reading commitments and enough time on my hands to give this third Hartmouth Horrors novella my undivided attention. I know the revising and editing process isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I for one am absolutely loving it. And with any luck, all this pleasure in the writing will translate across to pleasure in the reading.

And that’s my penny’s worth for today. Until next week, happy writing to you all.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Putting the Ew in Book Reviewing

Image
This Monday morning, my mind is on some iffy behaviour from book reviewers in the indie writing space. If you’re looking for something light and uplifting,  I suggest you read no further, but  if you also have some gripes with reviewers, please be my guest. (Let it be known, by the way, that most reviewers seem to be doing great things. Pretty sure I speak for other indies when I say we appreciate you and are thankful for the love and attention you bring to our work.) Okay, so with that said… Gripe one, why announce you’re reading a book (or planning to) if you’re going to go quiet about it afterwards? It only makes writers wonder what the hell is wrong with their work, and they’ll probably end up thinking a whole lot less of you. And yes, we’ve all made the mistake of speaking too soon then finding the story or prose or whatever isn’t to our liking. But doing this on the regular? Come on. Gripe two, why seek favours, or even some form of compliance, from writers by dangling a...
Read more

Looking for Connection

Image
This Monday morning, my mind is on the fact that someone just subjected one of my books to over two hours of less than complimentary video analysis, as well as covering it in some blood-like fluid and driving a knife through it to create a thumbnail image. And rather than piss and moan about this—which, trust me, I’d really love to do, being as big a crybaby as the next man—I’ve decided this is a good time to renew my commitment to being a positive presence in the indie writing space. Yes, I’m primarily here for myself, to promote my own writing, so this isn’t some heroic declaration. But I don’t think that’s incompatible with putting my best foot forward along the way. After all, a love of telling stories and a desire to build an audience for them is ultimately about looking for connection, at least in my own case. If I can find others who love what I love and get what I get, that’s pretty much job done, right? The sales, the relative popularity, are simply a byproduct of that. So the...
Read more

Blurb Before Story

Image
Welcome to my Monday morning blog, which is basically me smashing out a few half-baked paragraphs about whatever’s on my mind. I’m no article writer, so please don’t expect anything polished or SEO-compliant, but here goes anyway... About a year ago on Twitter, in response to the common gripe that writing book blurbs is a nightmare, someone claimed to habitually write theirs before even getting started on the story. I was so impressed with this idea, which does sound kind of barmy, true, that I tried it myself. And two novellas later, I have to say I’m a convert. Blurbing first allows me to get the essence of the story down in writing, and that blurb then acts as kind of a pole star to guide me as I pants the first draft. I may need to tweak it as I go along, but so far that’s been easy enough. Pushback to this idea (when I float it, which isn’t very often) generally comes as the claim that “I don’t even know what the story is yet, so how the hell can I write the blurb?” Which for me r...
Read more