Writing to the End

Seems like my book sales always tail off in the first part of each month. I am not sure why, but there might be a reason. I am not much of a self-promoter and usually see an uptick after I do some type of live presentation. I do not have thousands of follows on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus or all the other social media sites like many writers do. My numbers have grown the past few years slowly, as I usually hand select which one’s I want to refollow.

Six Books Down - Two More Coming Soon

It is embarrassing how slow I have been in getting new books published. I get down to the last few edit, revising and first reader steps and then start something else, or stall out on a book cover. I have always enjoyed writing the words, not so much with selecting or building book covers.

The last few weeks have been full of meetings, travel, Dr. appointments and bad weather for us. Those seem to be pretty good excuses for my slow down.

And, at times, heavy cross traffic slows me down

I read an excellent post recently about plotting or not plotting when writing a novel. It always interests me when I see how others go about putting a story together. I start with an idea, usually an event. In the two books that I am working on covers for, here are the ideas I start with. With my children's book, book three of a series, It was easy, the entire series has a theme. In my newest, my three protagonist kids meet up with a vampire. This follows the theme of the first two where they met up with a ghost and a zombie.

My historical fiction is a bit more complicated. In the first of what will be four or more novels with protagonist Blade Holmes, he gets involved in a real mystery following bad guys back and forth from Laramie City to Fort Laramie Wyoming. The second book, also partially set at Fort Laramie ends with the Ghost Dance in the Black Hills.

After I have an idea, with nothing else to go on, I write the first chapter, letting my mind take it where it may. After that, I put together a few notes on where I want the story to go. With these notes, I will often write down scenes and places I want to include. Then I start writing. I never pick an ending at the start, often half way through I know how it will end, sometimes I end in a place and with an event that surprises me.

Love to hear from others as to how you put a tale together.

Meanwhile - keep on writing and keep on writing. 

You can take a look at my Amazon page here.

What Makes a Good Edit?

It’s not often that I edit something and am satisfied with the result. This one was pretty good. I am working on a novel with an opening chapter of 3,200 words and not very good ones at that. It is a story I like, but the first chapter has me putting it on the back shelf, time after time. What did I do? I gutted it, streamlined it back to 1,800 words, and now it works.

Thought I might need the Military to blast out parts of this book!
Took this photo on a recent walk - nice fly over

Novels do not need fillers - I should have known better, I tried to explain everything in the first chapter, even things the reader would discover later. It not only had laundry lists of facts that were not needed, it had too many things that had no relation to the rest of the story. It reminded me of the parts in newspapers and magazines that we used to call, fillers or interesting tidbits, whatever that is. For me, it was useless added information that would not become part of the story later.

Now this is pretty good filler and will make a great novel scene someday

One last comment - I like a shorter, not a longer opening chapter. Maybe that is what bothered me, a 12-page opening chapter, I like the all-new look of the now seven-page chapter. Now off to the press, not really, but I always wanted to say that.

A note on the book with the new first chapter – here is the cover (shot moments ago with my cell phone).

The Photo is Centered on the Actual Book
Not So Much Here On My Cell Photo

The book should be available in the middle of July. It has already been proofed and edited, I just did not like it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson on Editing – I love reading Emerson, and in my historical fiction book, Commitment, the protagonist, Blade Holmes quotes him, as he will in my upcoming, book two, of the Blade Holmes trilogy.

  Emerson said, “Let the reader find that he cannot afford any line of your writing because you have omitted every word that he can spare.”

Not sure he was always that sparse but he often was.

 Meanwhile - Have a great week - keep on reading, and keep on writing, and sadly we must all keep on editing and rewriting. 

My Wyoming Garden is doing fine, and thanks for asking!

Writing a Perfect Paragraph

Stalled – that’s where I am right now. I have written on this blog a few times in the last three months about having a finished book that I am editing. Well, I still am. I don’t like the first chapter and despite many fixings, it still does not seem to work. I like the story, think it’s a good one, but doesn’t every author think their story is a good one?

Something Just Does Not Seem to be Correct

The Problem 

This novel is set in modern times but has several flashback chapter to the 1800s. I wanted to write the first two chapters, one in the present and one in flashback. Chapter one started as the flashback with chapter two taking readers to the present. That didn’t seem to work, so I switched them. Now chapter one is in the present and chapter two sets the modern day story from an event in the past. This seems to work. The problem is that the first chapter is still not very strong. I am afraid readers will put it away before getting to the meat of the tale. That and the fact that readers looking at the free preview of the book will see this chapter, not great for sales.

Chapter one describes the two main characters, the setting and why they are there. To me, it reads like the age old, bad writing chapter - laundry list, of too many facts and not enough story.

Oh, What Should I Do?

The way I see it, I have three options, maybe four.

1.  Start the book with a scene that I now have later in the story. Might work, but this means a different type of flashback, and I am not sure I want that.

2.  Flip chapters one and two again – not happening.

3.  This will probably be it – rewrite adding a new action scene to drive the reader forward to the story.

4.  Who knows? Trash the chapter and let the reader figure out what is happening as they go. Not a bad idea, but seems confusing when I read it this way. Not likely I will use this one.

Number three is the option I will most likely take. I don’t like it because I have no idea how, or what, I will do with this. I will write it as soon as I am struck with some type of magical inspiration.

How Do I Choose One From So Many Options?

But I Do Have Another Project

On another note, I am well into my second Blade Holmes, Western Mystery, tentatively titled, Ghost Dance Moon. Presently the novel is 32,000 words, looks like about 60% complete. Yesterday I wrote a few lines and had to find my wife so that I could read the part to her, yes, I thought it was that good. Not sure if she agreed, but either she did or at least pretended that she thought it to be the beautiful literary, masterful writing, I believed it to be. 

That’s what writers live for, ahhh, the perfect sentence or paragraph, doesn’t happen often, but when it does – glorious!

A great scene should read like this photo - perfection

Rewrite or Leave as Is

I've been doing some editing the past two weeks, everything I do keeps bringing me back to this quote.

“I have been correcting the proofs of my poems. In the morning, after hard work, I took a comma out of one sentence…. In the afternoon I put it back again.” ~Oscar Wilde

Sometimes it might be best to walk away

I am surprised at how many times I have rewrote something in the margin and later scratch that out and write in bold red  - LEAVE AS IS

The good news is the weather is great in Wyoming and my golf game is already getting to mid-season form. Almost time to plant the garden and do some more editing.

Paper or Screen - Editing

Editing can be tough, as those of you that follow me know, I have a western I have been re-editing for five years. Ok- so I am afraid if I publish it no one will read it. But I have still edited it to death, and do find an occasional mistake.

So which is best? Editing off the screen with all the fun little red marks from the editing program, or a red pen and paper? Give me the hard copy. Seems like I can find things I need or want to change much easier on paper. My non-fiction book was an easy edit, but only after I printed it out, then used my red pen to change, eliminate or add what I wanted.

I do not think it is possible to find errors on the screen as easy as finding them on paper. Maybe that’s just the old school teacher in me. It also is likely the reason I post these, then later, sometimes much later, am horrified when I find what I consider a grievous error. Oh the horrors!

I do use the spell check and editor on word, everyone should. I also use the screen to move large blocks of text around, much easier.

Maybe I am a poor screen editor because when I am on my laptop I also watch TV, mess with my phone, talk to others and constantly interrupt myself. Editing on paper, I sat quietly and did my edit. Yep, I may have found the answer.

One final thought. Younger generations that have always used technology to read and write probably are more comfortable editing on the screen. Now back to that game I was playing on Kindle, and maybe I should check twitter on my phone, oops, a bird on the feeder better check it out, looks like spring.

Where did I put my golf clubs?

A Long time Ago

Wow-Did you ever leave something alone and then come back to it a year or more later? It will be either better than you remembered or filler for the trash. In my case I was happy with the novel I put away-two years ago, better than I thought, still needs some grammar and punctuation stuff but all in all I like the story. Time to get back to work; hope to peddle this before the first of September

Why I hate editing and other horror stories

I understand that there are writers that enjoy editing. Somewhere there are probably people that enjoy flat tires, painting the fence and swatting mosquitoes, but I am not familiar with any of those folks. I do not like editing, I try anything to get out of it and it always works—trouble is the material stays the same. Yep, you guessed it, needs editing.
I have a completed manuscript and have edited seventeen pages (of nearly 300) in the last fourteen months. Instead of editing I have spent my time writing stories. Writing is more fun and more rewarding than editing. So I chose to write not edit.
Do you know why people blog—I do, no editing. Not here anyway.
Well back to editing and my unending search for the extra adjective and the hated adverb.
Now I am too tired to tell other horror stories—good night!

-N-