Redeemer Wars
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many edits. such revision.
I’m trying to keep my nose to the grindstone while also being caught in this frustrating window of hurry up and wait.
I put in an order for a proof for MAGIC & MANNERS on the 6th and it still hasn’t arrived, so I went and looked up why and the damned thing says it’s still ‘pending’. I don’t understand why, unless I’m supposed to tell the system that it’s print-approved, except as far as I can tell that will propagate it into the publication system and I don’t want to do that until I’m sure the cover is okay. So I emailed them to ask what’s going on, but I’d really, really wanted it out this week and so I’m kind of sad and frustrated about that right now.
I’m also trying to get first-pass revisions done on a book I wrote almost 20 years ago. It’s interesting going back to it, because I can see a lot of what I was trying to do but wasn’t very good at, like some really terrible chapter transitions where I was clearly trying to inject drama and cut fat, but instead I injected confusion, even to myself (albeit, yes, 20 years later, but still). Other places I can see, again, what I was trying to do, but mostly it just needs to be rewritten entirely to achieve that. It’s like: “Good try, little writer.” And then there are the dialogue tags and adverbs, dear gods. But in a *few* places, it’s actually quite good. :) I thought I might be able to revise it all in two passes, but at this stage I’m afraid it’ll probably take three.
Anyway, I do have to get through the first pass this week so next week I can write the next Old Races short story next week. I’m at about 76K on the collection of pre-Negotiator-trilogy short stories, and would like somewhere between 85-100K to fill it out, so I’m like SO CLOSE on that that I can practically taste it, but I do have to get another…well, 1-4 stories, really, to reach that wordcount. If I didn’t already have 2 10K Biali stories in it I’d write another one of those to fill it out because apparently he lends himself to long stories. :) Anyway, this is a good time to mention it if you’ve got a particular pre-trilogy story you’d really like me to tell, because who knows, I might. (“Anything involving X” is not specific enough, and there are already 3 Janx & Daisani stories in the book, so unless you come up with something VERY clever for them I’m not likely to put a fourth in. :))
*stares at the to-do list* Yeah. So revisions, short story, and then I’d really *like* to hit that revision pass again before…doing more revisions. REDEEMER needs to be whipped into shape so I can submit it to my editor, and then I’ve got BEWITCHING BENEDICT to revise for hooooopefully a June publication. Maybe August. IDK.
I would really, really like to have all the heavy lifting on revisions done for EVERYTHING by the middle of the year so I can really concentrate on writing in the second half. But man, there’s a lot of work to be done.
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Writing Wednesday: I finished a book!
It always strikes me, when I use that phrase, “I finished a book,” that I usually mean something different than 99% of other people do when they say it. Possibly 99.7%. I, of course, generally mean I finished writing a book, as opposed to reading one. (Although let me tell you, there are times anymore when finishing reading one seems like as much of a triumph…)
Anyway, so on Monday I finished the (oh my god so very) rough draft of REDEEMER, which has been hanging over me for what feels like forever. It came in at 104K, which is about where–in the past couple weeks, anyway–I thought it would land (previous to that, 120K still didn’t seem out of the bounds of possibility). It needs more work than my manuscripts usually do when I finish the draft, which is sad, but that’ll teach me to try to do like three different difficult things in one manuscript. @.@
On one hand it’s a huge relief to have the book done. On the other, finishing it triggers the rest of the production to-do list, and that looks like this:
Redeemer Wars (Redeemer) To Do:
–get cover art done
–finish manuscript
– revise manuscript to fix notes, descriptions, language, etc
-submit to editor
– revise to editorial specs
– resubmit to editor
– do line edits
– submit to copyeditor
– submit for cover design
– submit for page layouts
– get ISBNs
– submit for econversion
– deliver to kickstarter backers
– submit for possible audio book
– submit for reviews
– submit for self-publicationObviously this does not all happen at once, but it’s a REALLY LONG LIST and I’m almost certainly forgetting things. So I’m glad to have the book done but AUGH SO MUCH TO DO NEXT. This is why writers like traditional publishing. @>@
Anyway, none of that is happening this week. It’d be nice if none of it was happening even in February, but I’m already horribly late with the book and need to move on it more quickly than not. Still, I need a few days away from it, at least.
In the meantime I’ve reached 41.4K words written for the month of January and it seems like sort of a pity to not push it up to 50K. Sadly, the thing I really kinda wanna to work on isn’t likely to give me that kind of wordcount, not unless I do a great deal more of it than I could reasonably expect in the next five days (so what am I doing instead of working hard on it right now? Writing this blog post!), whereas writing a new Old Races short story would give me close to the wordcount AND get a new story ready for the Patreon crew and is therefore what I obviously *should* be doing.
I’m prolly gonna do the other thing anyway. :) I have a–well, let’s face it, an unrealistic–goal of getting a book out every other month this year, and getting going on this thing might make that possible. Yeah. YEAH. So THERE. SEE?!?!
…or something. :)
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writer alarm: engage!
So I’ve been looking into what’s necessary for submitting self-published books to major review sites (RT, PW, etc) and the answer is primarily “a long lead time.” Several months. Four, for RT, ideally four but 3 is bearable, for PW.
Which means if I want to get REDEEMER in for a late October launch, just post-Octocon, I have to have it written and edited by 21 June.
AAAAAAAAAAGH.
Written, yes, it will be written. But *edited*? Like to the editor, returned to me, and revised? That seems…unlikely!
I mean, I’m gonna go for it, obviously. I’ll try to do it. And it struck me that of course I can always *delay the general release*, it doesn’t *have* to come out immediately following Octocon, it’d just be *nice*, and it’ll obviously be out to backers well before that, but holy beans, this is a side to Official Self Publishing I hadn’t wrangled with before.
I’m pretty sure I could get the whole thing done by 21 June if I didn’t also have MAGIC & MANNERS revisions to do and the rest of Easter break to deal with (not to mention this Amazingly Snotty Cold), but since the start date for writing REDEEMER is around the 20th or the 27th, it would take some truly amazing work to get it done *that* fast. And it’s true that I’m amazing, but I don’t know if I’m *that* amazing. :)
I guess we’ll see how that whole Thorough Synopsis thing goes. :)
Speaking of MAGIC & MANNERS, I have great hopes of getting the *completed*, revised, copyedited, etc, book to backers at the end of the month, although that may be…a little ambitious. Mid-May is probably more likely, but again, I’m gonna go for May 1. Because that would be satisfying and they have been patient and yeah.
I love all you guys. <3 :)
