With a new year, I was hopeful that today would be exceptional productive. As I hiked up my 80 odd steps to the fourth floor, I was very positive that I would really get something great today.
Turned out, it wasn't half bad. I was hopeful of getting more actually done--not even 3k words, and that includes something I wrote earlier but hadn't put it in yet. But what I got was, though a lot of dialogue, still pretty solid. I've kind of resigned myself to the fact that there's a lot of talking in my books. It's just how I think, it's how I conceive the transmission of information (that's one of the predominant ways of communication, after all, and I spend so much of my professional life talking, it's just part of who I am and how I write).
I'm marching steadily toward my goal of 250,000 by April, and I'm thinking that, at this rate, I will be able to reach it sometime late February and perhaps early March. I do have some cluttered weekends, however, that are brooding in the future, so I'm not willing to change the goal. Besides, the goals are meaningless if I change them to make them easier/harder. The point is, I have something that I'm working toward, and I aim to get it. If I don't, well...that's that.
If all goes according to the vaguest plans inside of my head, I will have an interesting choice coming up. See, I've always printed out the whole first draft in a single document, having UPS print me out a spiral bound copy so that I can point to it and say, "I wrote that!" Then, if I liked the story (unlike Tales from the Flame), I reread it. Then, if it's still worth working on, I reread it with a pen in hand, making hardcopy edits.
But this time, I have my Kindle.
Don't get me wrong; I'm still going to have the whole thing printed out. I kind of have to; not only is it tradition, but it's a permanent save of everything that I've done in the story thus far. It's a great boost to my self-esteem to see it in that physical, tangible way. But I don't know if I want to mark it all up on hardcopy, or let those changes occur inside of the digital realm. The Kindle has been reading me pieces of my story for six months or so now, and it is amazingly convenient. Hauling around almost 500 pages of text to edit is hard to do--it's mentally draining and physically intimidating. The Kindle would let me look at the whole thing all at once, annotate it easily, and, in a sense, let me flip through my marks more quickly and effectively. But it won't be the same, and I have to decide if I'm willing to jump into the 21st century with both feet when it comes to my books.
This also touches on one of the other dreams I have, and whether I'm willing to let it slip away: Having my book on a bookstore shelf. With the sad demise of Borders last year, I'll never get to do a signing or see my book there. Barnes and Noble is doing pretty well (though not as well as they want, I think), and indie bookstores are, as always, keeping their heads just above water. Soon enough, books as I grew up with them will be obsolete. Am I willing to let the obsolescence of my medium of choice stop me from making writing a lucrative pass time? I don't know.
See, the Amazon Kindle store could allow me to publish the book as soon as I'm done with it. In fact, I could publish it, edit it, update it, and be gaining exposure/making money almost simultaneously. I could give away the first half of it free, all of it free, or price it anywhere between $1 to $10 and make some money (provided, of course, people buy it). A number of authors have fully eschewed publishers and agents, opting to 'go it alone' by using Amazon's Kindle as the platform.
While that's an option, there are thousands of aspiring authors who are making the same decision--and the market is getting crowded by the minute. Just today, you can get over 600 free brand new books on the Kindle. (A large portion are erotica, which doesn't affect me, but it does create even more white noise than a typical bookstore would have.) With that much to wade through, who's keen on giving a book a try that's loaded with poetry, politics, and fantasy all whipped into one? A more germane question: How do I reach that person?
Traditional publishing helps with marketing, ARCs, and other tricks at getting people to pay attention to your work. Amazon may provide a better ROI, but the actual ground work is also larger.
As the ending of the book slowly draws closer, these are questions that I really have to start answering somehow...
P.S. I just did a quick look at my first book, The Terra Campaign: Impetus. It's almost 275,000 words, and the manuscript was 502 pages, single-spaced. So Writ in Blood doesn't seem likely to be as long as my first novel, but it's half again longer than Words of the Silenced. Hooray for random stats!
Turned out, it wasn't half bad. I was hopeful of getting more actually done--not even 3k words, and that includes something I wrote earlier but hadn't put it in yet. But what I got was, though a lot of dialogue, still pretty solid. I've kind of resigned myself to the fact that there's a lot of talking in my books. It's just how I think, it's how I conceive the transmission of information (that's one of the predominant ways of communication, after all, and I spend so much of my professional life talking, it's just part of who I am and how I write).
I'm marching steadily toward my goal of 250,000 by April, and I'm thinking that, at this rate, I will be able to reach it sometime late February and perhaps early March. I do have some cluttered weekends, however, that are brooding in the future, so I'm not willing to change the goal. Besides, the goals are meaningless if I change them to make them easier/harder. The point is, I have something that I'm working toward, and I aim to get it. If I don't, well...that's that.
If all goes according to the vaguest plans inside of my head, I will have an interesting choice coming up. See, I've always printed out the whole first draft in a single document, having UPS print me out a spiral bound copy so that I can point to it and say, "I wrote that!" Then, if I liked the story (unlike Tales from the Flame), I reread it. Then, if it's still worth working on, I reread it with a pen in hand, making hardcopy edits.
But this time, I have my Kindle.
Don't get me wrong; I'm still going to have the whole thing printed out. I kind of have to; not only is it tradition, but it's a permanent save of everything that I've done in the story thus far. It's a great boost to my self-esteem to see it in that physical, tangible way. But I don't know if I want to mark it all up on hardcopy, or let those changes occur inside of the digital realm. The Kindle has been reading me pieces of my story for six months or so now, and it is amazingly convenient. Hauling around almost 500 pages of text to edit is hard to do--it's mentally draining and physically intimidating. The Kindle would let me look at the whole thing all at once, annotate it easily, and, in a sense, let me flip through my marks more quickly and effectively. But it won't be the same, and I have to decide if I'm willing to jump into the 21st century with both feet when it comes to my books.
This also touches on one of the other dreams I have, and whether I'm willing to let it slip away: Having my book on a bookstore shelf. With the sad demise of Borders last year, I'll never get to do a signing or see my book there. Barnes and Noble is doing pretty well (though not as well as they want, I think), and indie bookstores are, as always, keeping their heads just above water. Soon enough, books as I grew up with them will be obsolete. Am I willing to let the obsolescence of my medium of choice stop me from making writing a lucrative pass time? I don't know.
See, the Amazon Kindle store could allow me to publish the book as soon as I'm done with it. In fact, I could publish it, edit it, update it, and be gaining exposure/making money almost simultaneously. I could give away the first half of it free, all of it free, or price it anywhere between $1 to $10 and make some money (provided, of course, people buy it). A number of authors have fully eschewed publishers and agents, opting to 'go it alone' by using Amazon's Kindle as the platform.
While that's an option, there are thousands of aspiring authors who are making the same decision--and the market is getting crowded by the minute. Just today, you can get over 600 free brand new books on the Kindle. (A large portion are erotica, which doesn't affect me, but it does create even more white noise than a typical bookstore would have.) With that much to wade through, who's keen on giving a book a try that's loaded with poetry, politics, and fantasy all whipped into one? A more germane question: How do I reach that person?
Traditional publishing helps with marketing, ARCs, and other tricks at getting people to pay attention to your work. Amazon may provide a better ROI, but the actual ground work is also larger.
As the ending of the book slowly draws closer, these are questions that I really have to start answering somehow...
P.S. I just did a quick look at my first book, The Terra Campaign: Impetus. It's almost 275,000 words, and the manuscript was 502 pages, single-spaced. So Writ in Blood doesn't seem likely to be as long as my first novel, but it's half again longer than Words of the Silenced. Hooray for random stats!
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