13th March Publish Day.

I did it. I put my e-book for publishing on Amazon and Smashwords. It will be available within 24 hours on Amazon, that is if there are no formatting errors. Smashwords I guess will take a little bit longer, by mistake I uploaded the wrong doc file, so I don't think that one will go well trough the meatgrinder.

Soon in a e-store nearby:

Failed my 6 March deadline

What the title says. No beer for me. I worked all weekend long, the whole Sunday. My eyes are dry, my head aches, and I'm sleepy. I call quits and bury my 6th of March deadline and plant my new deadline 13th of March. Maybe I'll have more luck.

With the added time I'll make sure I'll have the least mistakes possible in my story. I could rush my work now and make my deadline, but I would deliver it with less quality than I intent to.

I've finished my description for my Novel, here it is:

John Lone had to deliver a package to a secluded cabin in the forest, later that day he had an important date planned with his girlfriend Linda.

A simple routine trip he had made many a time turned out bad. Supernatural creatures stalked within the forest for any innocent prey they could devour.

John will have to fight for his live to get out, to get back to society, back to his girl, and his only chance to a happily ever after, but this is no fairy tale.

Final Cover

I finished my Cover.

I've only got one day left for me to finish my book and put it up to publish. I'll only need to do one more quick read over and if I find minimal (hopefully none) mistakes, I'll be good to go. Well not entirely, I'll need to put everything in the right format for Amazon or/and Smashwords to take them. This all to get to my self imposed deadline of the sixth of march. I boisterously said to my wife that I would not drink one drop of alcohol (I need beer) till I hit that publish button. I'm really stressing to get the deadline.

If all goes well tomorrow I'll be hitting the publish button and in a few days my e-book will be for sale. Then I'll take a week break from writing (or try to) so to freshly start revising book two, which I intend to have ready early may.

Hopefully you'll see this book soon on Amazon, Smashwords, or somewhere else for sale.

6 March

Yes it's almost done. I intent to put my work for (self)e-publishing on Amazon and Smashwords on the sixth of march 2011.

Today I finished my pre-final revision, I'll read my book once more over (will take about 8 hours) to catch the little mistakes left in, and then I'll format it to be able to publish it.

Also my cover is almost finished, I only need to polish it a little bit so it will be that much greater than it already is. (I'm over aggrandizing)

It's been about three years I started writing my first novel. It's been a time of much learning and trail and error to get to the point that I dare to release my first work. I'm not a great writer yet, but I aspire to be one, and this will be another step of many to get there.

I'm excited and looking forward to the day the first person buys my e-book.

Long time passed since last post.

Like the title says, it's been a while since my last post. The reason: I've been busy revising, actually I'm still busy revising. I'm writing this, between a revising session. I think it's funny that I'm writing on my break from writing related stuff. Last message I posted was about finding the fun in revising and I've not found it yet. I just like it a little bit better now.

Revising is a lot of work and I think it's much more, for a beginner like me. I'm now at the place where I try to make every sentence error free and publishable. Its a slow progress, for example it takes me about an hour to finish one page. (Or it could be that I'm just slow.)

I hoped to be ready by 25 December 2010, but obviously I didn't manage that. I shoved my own made deadline forward to the 31 of January 2011. This is a special date, being it's the third year anniversary being married to my lovely wife. Too bad I won't be getting that deadline either, also I won't be setting another deadline. I just hope to be finished in a few months.

What I did finish, is the book's cover and it looks great, it really does, I've seen it myself, actually I made it myself. Also I've finally finished thinking about which author name I will use, I've chosen my own name, I'll plan to make a separate post about this announced (The how and why) in the near future. The book cover I'll reveal closer to the releasing day.

It's because I plan to self publish that I'm really taking my time in correcting all the mistakes in my book, if I had the money, I would pay someone to edit, it would be a time safer. Now I can only say; it's done when it's done.

Finding the fun in revising.

Some writers think revising is fun. I'm not one of them, not yet anyways. I've steadily been revising my work, it's a hard and tedious job I'm not inclined to do. I feel creativity is much more fun.

I prefer not to bother with grammar, sentence structure and that all, I just want to envision and put that what is in my head on paper. I may not prefer the technical side but I still need it, I need it to be able to put my creativity om paper in the correct way to be able to show what I mean.

So revise I will, it's a necessity no matter if I like it or not, I'll have to do it. I don't want readers to claw their eyes out reading poor syntax with every word spelled out like a three year old. So I've tried to find the fun revising and so far not found it yet. What I did find was a hint of that fun. After revising, my work is better than before, this gives a feeling of satisfaction great enough to continue.

Well back I go to revising my work, maybe soon I'll find the fun in doing so.

To edit or not to edit....

That's been the question I asked my self repeatedly, about a month ago.

I've now three stories written and a fourth on the way, nothing but first drafts. Writting the fourth one, with every word I put on paper, I would ask the question, to edit or not to edit. It just kept throbbing in my head, after a while I decided not to write for a few days.

Days turned into one week, one week into another one and on and on, still the question kept on running laps in my head. Finally I decided to go for it and I started editing my very first story.
I'm sure now it's the right thing to do, else I would have kept writing till I've finished a hundred first drafts and would have no book to show for.

First thing I noticed while editing was that it's difficult to do, still I'm glad I'm doing it myself. Would I pay someone to do it for me it would set me back a lot of money, money I don't have.

I have to say my very first draft is bad. I have said this before, but it's really bad, so bad it requires repeating, it's bad. Every line I went over I had to change or add something.

For the first 10k words, I had to add a lot of missing words. Doing so, I increased my word count by 2k.

The next 10k words, I noticed I did in fact have fewer missing words, this is evidence that I did improve a little. It made me a little giddy, not for long though, because I noticed another amateur mistake I made, I used too much explaining and describing.

I actually wrote a bit describing how my main character walked to a door, turned the knob, opened the door and passed through it into the other room, grabbed the door knob and closed the door behind him. A simple he opened the door would have sufficed.
There were many more examples like this, I had to scrap many sentences and my manuscript lost weight, 3k words in weight.

From there on till to where I am now, I came to the part in the story with more than three characters in the same scenes. Here I noticed that I started doing another newbie mistake, head hopping.
One should be very careful with a constant changing POV, a reader may get disorientated reading and the writer also could while writing. I had to fix this and it took a lot of time and brain power. (I'm depleted right now.)

I'm glad I'm able to notice these mistakes, this is partly due to gained experience and by reading 'How To' books. This makes my writing much better than it used to be.

The editing in itself is a learning moment. I'm going slow now, but with experience I hope to become faster and able to spot more mistakes. A boon with gaining experience is that I'll make less mistakes while writing and will require less editing. (or that I hope.)

I said it before and I'll say it again, I'm happy with my choice. That what I've edited, read much better and I can honestly say it's not bad anymore.