I Finished an 8,500 Word Short Story

When sudden stroke or paralysis knocks a person off the track of life, it takes time and rehabilitation to re-order things. One starts walking again one baby step at a time.

In my recovery from my writing paralysis, it is similar. Time helps. Writing therapy (exercises) does, too. Finally, I reach the point where I decide I am going to finish a story I started two years ago, and I do. It feels good. A friend of mine, an avid reader, looks at it and says it works. That feels good, too. I like the story. That feels best.

Final editing and getting the story formatted for publication comes next. Baby steps. Each step gets me closer to my goal of professional author.

New Author Education from Lauren Carr

Lauren Carr, top-selling mystery author, has a new book in the works: Authors in Bathrobes. It is a down-to-earth tutorial for the new author. It will be  available before Christmas on Amazon.

I want to share an excerpt from her book that describes where I am in the publishing process. It is an educational eye-opener for the new author who has a publication-ready manuscript and wants to know what comes next.

ARC: Advanced Review Copy

When you traditionally publish, approximately three to four months before a book is released, the publisher will send out advanced copies of books to publications, reviewers, or even celebrities. Authors will sometimes offer ARC’s as giveaways or prizes for fans.

The purpose of this advanced release of the book is two-fold:

The reviewers are able to read the book and provide reviews, which will come out at the same time as the release. This is how big-named books by major authors have hundreds of reviews posted, sometimes even before the book is released. Big publishers will send out hundreds (sometimes thousands) of ARC’s, also called Uncorrected Proofs, to get the publicity ball rolling. The reviewers know that they are reading a proof, so they are forgiving of typos and errors.

Meanwhile, the author is reviewing the book for any last-minute errors he or she may catch.

Because I am a new author and do not have a staff of editors to do the work of editing for me, I am s-l-o-w about getting my changes made. I grossly underestimated the time it would take to proof and correct my book manuscript.

Lauren’s book will help you avoid lots of mistakes that beginners make. Watch for it. It is coming soon!

 

Using Beta Readers for Helpful Feedback

This week, I will be getting my feedback from the Beta readers (who are kind of like a focus group in business). I will likely have to fix things before going to press. The writer’s work is NEVER done, but, at some point, I have to draw the line in the sand, and go with it.

The publication process for this manuscript has been the equivalent of an undergraduate degree. I learned how much I didn’t know about writing, the craft itself, and about pleasing the reader. Bad writing CAN be informative. Fixing bad writing is an education.

The telling of a good tale is far more complex than I imagined when I started this writer’s journey.

Marketing My Novel, Step 3

The editing and re-writing process involves sharing my manuscript with others for reading and feedback. It’s here that I catch glaring errors that may turn off readers. If I have the hero in my story as a tall blond in chapter one, but a muscular brunette in chapter six, I have a GLARING ERROR.

When a book is written over a long period of time, it is easy to mix-up details. So going over and over the manuscript myself, then passing it on to several other readers to catch mistakes, is a critical step in marketing a novel.

If I have heard one consistent complaint about Indie books, it is this–Indie books lack quality editing. I still may not catch every flaw, but I want to make my best effort to get it right. I owe that to my future readers.

Feedback is also a critical component to creating a good manuscript. I may think I have described seven elves nailing new shingles on the roof clearly and concisely. When I hand the manuscript off to a trained reader, I’ll find out the truth about my assumption.

I love it when my test readers say, “I don’t understand what’s happening here.” It means I have a GLARING ERROR. If my test reader is having trouble following the narrative, my reader who has paid for my book is going to have trouble, too.

Re-writing and editing should improve the manuscript, which in turn improves a reader’s experience with the story. If a reader likes the book, she may recommend it to someone else. That word-of-mouth advertising is the best marketing out there.

Madly Editing

To complete a story–a novel–is a milestone. To complete editing and re-writing the novel so that it is editor-ready is monumental. Just ask me.

I thought it was difficult translating an idea in my mind to words on paper for the first rough draft. Turns out, that part feels like child’s play compared to the re-write.

There is a lot of self-doubt, second-guessing and anxiety that goes along with the actual editorial work. The whole time I am working, I am asking myself if the story passes muster. Will there be an audience for the book? Will the persons I wrote for be the actual persons who like and read the novel?

Today I learned that traditional publishers tell authors that a new book has a shelf-life of three months in which the story either makes it or breaks it. After hours and hours of work, three months is it?

At this moment, three words come to mind: just shoot me.

 

The Value of a Sidekick

Thank you, Wretched Richard’s Almanac, (http://richarddaybell.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/wretched-richards-almanac-5-7-13/) for providing the inspiration for this post.

Authors are loners of sorts. We tend to write books in privacy.

Yet, to improve or validate our work, we need helpful others. The helpful other, like the sidekick in the old-time western film, provides a counter-point to our own perspective about our work. A sidekick will read our story and truthfully dissect it for us to make either the story or the author better.

A valuable sidekick is, above all, a truth-teller. It takes a brave person to tell a creator that his creation is flawed. A sidekick is also a diplomat; The truth-telling, to be effective, must be done tactfully. Finally, the sidekick must be knowledgeable. Effective criticism comes out of taste or expertise garnered through experience. If the sidekick is an avid reader in our genre–and has an artist’s soul of sorts–he discerns when a story works or doesn’t. Because our sidekick is intelligent, he can articulate  the “why” when the manuscript fails.

I feel fortunate to have three sidekicks to give me the necessary kick-in-the-pants I need to improve my work. Sometimes I am obstinate and ignore sage advice. It is to my own detriment when I do.

A valuable sidekick is trying to make my writing better. That, to an author, is a priceless gift.

Guest Post from Lauren Carr on Grammar

Now, every editor has a thing or two or three or dozen, in which they will not trust their knowledge, but will look it up in their style manual every single time. For me, the question of a proper name ending in “s” and used in possessive is one of those things. The Chicago Style Manual called for this possessive to be “s’”, not “s’s”.

Well, the author said I was wrong and that it is supposed to be “s’s”.

So, I looked it up again, not just in the Chicago Style Manual, but several sites on the Internet. Not only did I discover that the answer varies in the Chicago Style Manual depending on which edition you use, but I also found a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States had gotten involved in this very argument while writing a decision on a case! Even the justices disagreed! Clarence Thomas (who should know since his name ends in an “s”) declared that it is “s’”.

I let the author have the last word and changed all of the possessive references for this character to “s’s”.

Then, upon proofing the book, the author brought in his daughter, a technical writer, who declared that it should be “s’”, without the extra “s”.

So I had to change it back.

Many people who are not in the business of writing, editing, or publishing fiction fail to realize that many of the grammar and punctuation rules that we were taught as being carved in stone really are not—especially when it comes to fiction.

Since working with new writers on their first books, I have been amazed by how many have friends who are grammar teachers, or professional technical writers, who suddenly come out of the woodwork when it comes to proofing (not editing) their buddy’s first book. These friends are more than ready to criticize how the book has been edited. Unfortunately, these friends, who are well meaning and probably have the apostrophe rules down pat, are not experienced editors of fiction, which is as specialized, and different, as technical editing.

If you needed a heart transplant, would you ask your neighbor, who happens to be a brain surgeon, to perform the operation or to stand by in the operating room to second guess your heart surgeon?

My point in this post is not to gripe (maybe it is), but it is also to educate new writers, and readers and reviewers, that when proofing, or reading fiction, what we would call “basic grammar and punctuation” is not really so basic when it comes to editing fiction.

Example: Can you imagine Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn written in the Queen’s English? Well, it isn’t. If a high school language arts teacher had gotten her hands on that novel …

Editors of fiction have to take the author’s voice, the character’s point of view, the reading audience, and how the general population reads novels into consideration when it comes to editing a novel.  YA audiences read present day erotica differently than readers with a more educated palate will read a sweeping historical epic. As a result, the editing needs to be adjusted accordingly. 

Sometimes, due to the character’s point of view and the circumstance—like a climactic scene—the passage will call for fragmented sentences that would make your eighth grade language arts teacher’s hair curl.  Or maybe another passage will call for long run-on sentences.

Now, this is not to say that when it comes to writing that we should toss out our high school grammar books and let anything go. No, that is not my point.

When reading fiction, I have found that I have grown to become more forgiving of what previously I would have viewed as blatant grammatical errors, because maybe in some style manual somewhere this error is not incorrect. Unless it is a glaring misuse of the words there, they’re, and their. That I cannot forgive—or is the Supreme Court of the United States arguing about that, too?