SERVANT OF A DARK GOD, written by the Lizard King of the Hollow Earth, and MONSTER HUNTER VENDETTA, by Gun Happy Larry Correia, have been picked up by the vendors that stock the book shelves in the Fresh Market and Maceys grocery stores in Utah. The dynamic duo rocks! So all of you wanting to give books for Christmas, pick some up when you go get your peanut butter and bread. This is excellent news for both books.
Folks, just wanted to update any who might be planning on attending my sessions at the American Fork Arts Council writing conference. I’ve had to cancel. There’s been a death in the family. My brother-in-law’s three week old son died yesterday. His name was Landry. I’ll be at the funeral up in Cokeville, Wyoming on Saturday. What a very, very hard thing for them. I was so looking forward to participating in the conference, but these folks need solace and support. I’m sure you understand. I hope to attend next year. And I will be presenting at CONduit in May, although the organizers haven’t gotten back yet with details. I’m sure you’ll still have a great time–there are so many other interesting presenters coming. Happiness.
As one of the literary footnotes. But, hey, there’s my mug. I’m sure when I take over the world next week, they’ll give me headline billing on the comics page. So leave them a comment and let them know how happy you are to see my handsome fleshy head.
Holy schmoly, has this been a ride. I projected the CURSE OF A DARK GOD to be 140,000 words. When I blew by that, I projected it would be 170,000. Today I just typed the last word of the first draft. It’s 230,000 words. For reference SERVANT OF A DARK GOD is 170,000 words.
The bad news is that while I’m really happy with this draft, it IS a first draft and needs some editing. I’m also behind schedule. I hit 140k words just a few weeks after my original deadline (in March), so I pride myself on knowing how fast I can write, but at that point I had, unknowingly, about a normal novel’s worth of material left to write. Obviously, I haven’t quite figured out yet how to estimate the size of these bigger works. The problem is that instead of getting a month or even two to revise, I’ve got two days. Then I have to turn it in to my editors.
The good news is that my editors haven’t canned me, yet. 🙂 And that they have great insight into story. And that I should have plenty of time to fix and polish this thing to make it shine. I just don’t like turning in first drafts. My goal with book three is to get back on schedule.
Having told you my scheduling woes, I am very excited about the characters and storylines and expect readers to enjoy this as much or more than the first in the series. However, I do wish I could get this process down so that I was 99% of the way there in one draft. There are some authors who can do that. Perhaps that will come with more experience. Until then, I get to enjoy revision.
Here are my stats:
For those who don’t know, an average young adult book as from 40,000 to 80,000 words. An average adult novel is from 70,000 – 120,000 words. I’m very pleased I was able to finish this monster. I might not be the fastest writer, but what this tells me is that I should be able to finish two big novels a year if I should ever be so lucky as to go full time.
If you write poopy-slow like me, you will finish 500-700 words of your draft in an hour. Let’s see what that means for various novel sizes.
And those requirements don’t count time you might need to spend re-imagining a piece or researching some gap in your knowledge or figuring out some knotty bit you couldn’t see was problematic when you first set out. A novel can be a big project and stretch over a few weeks, especially when you don’t have eight hours a day to write.
In this lesson, you will learn that you need to treat the draft like what it is–a project–and use basic project management techniques to help you get the work done.
I’ve finished chapter 17 of CURSE. I’m up to 50,000 words and have moved from the presentation phase into the struggle. And I’m stopping at this point to review the what I’ve got. I’ve learned that if the foundations of the story–the presentation phase–has fundamental flaws in it, you’re only going to create a HUGE rewrite mess if you push on.
I know this from experience. When writing the first draft of CURSE back in 2009 (oh my heck, it feels like forever ago), I ignored my Spideysenses and told myself I could fix anything that was wrong in post production. And it IS possible to fix many things afterwards–you can change scenes, improve clarity and transport, remove continuity errors, layer in character tags and things like that.
And it IS true that sometimes you do just have to write to the end to figure out the story. Sometimes you have to just write to the end, and do it in a substandard way, because if you don’t you’ll never finish anything. Sort of like sketching first and then painting. But if there’s something wrong with the basic premise of a story line, and you keep writing, then that story line affects everything it touches. The fractures ripple out all the way to the end of the book. And you might end up, like I did, having to toss a huge amount of what you’d written.
Which is not all bad. I learned a lot and invented a lot of cool stuff while writing that. But when you’re on a deadline, it can be a killer. And I’m not doing that this time. I worked out the big issues in my chapter outline.
So I’m pulling back and reviewing. I’m delighted with everything but the villain. He’s still not right. I love his chapters, the scenes. I love the name I’ve given him–Endless. But the structure isn’t right. I’ve inadvertantly created two main villains. And that’s not useful. Having two “main” villains doesn’t double the power of the opposition. It splits it. The villain/henchman model works well. But I don’t have that either. Over the next few days I’ll be rectifying the setup. Then moving forward.
For those of you who are writers, I thought you’d be interested to know that there were a few times these last two weeks when I dreaded the writing. I had a large problem before me or had to invent a new chapter (as opposed to using something from the previous draft), and a dread filled me. But I sketch/drafted my way to the end, and soon found the writing a joy again.
I can’t say enough about the sketch/draft method. I’ve found it works in creative activities OUTSIDE writing as well. When working up a lesson plan for my day job, designing landscaping for our house, developing a talking script for a sales call, writing a technical manual, or a hundred other things I’ve had to do–it’s always easier to work from something than create everything all from scratch.
Sketching allows me to create that first draft. And it allows me to do this without having to worry about quality. Sketches can be silly. Weird. Full of crap. They can be all this because I can throw them away. They’re not meant to be permanent. And so there’s no pressure to perform. There’s no staring at a blank screen or page. Sketching is a free-wheeling joy. It fills me up with ideas. And then, when I’ve got the general idea of what I want to do, I can start in on the “real” draft knowing WHAT I want to accomplish which leaves me free to think about the HOW. And if I run into problems and realize the draft isn’t going to work, or I run into something better, I just call the current draft a sketch (or “take” as used in the movie business) and move on to the real one.
Sometimes a chapter or section requires 1 sketch or take, sometimes I’ve run up into the 20’s. Sometimes I haven’t needed any at all. It’s not the number that’s important, it’s the process that has really freed me.
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I just wanted to say, I haven’t actually read your book yet, but I did buy it. You were asking about seeing Servant of a Dark God in grocery stores, well I’m in northern California (specifically the S.F. Bay Area), and I picked my copy of it up in a Rayle’s. I’m looking forward to reading it though. 🙂
Yes! YES!! YEEESSSSS!
I was hoping it was more than Utah. Thanks so much for letting me know. And I hope you enjoy the read!!