Blog – Page 7 – M. Jandreau

Friends are reading A Sour Chord!

So much has happened in the last week! Let’s get you all caught up, shall we?

For starters, I’ve sent out the book to half a dozen friends to read and give me their feedback. Not so much on the grammar and typo side, but of the story itself. They’ve been chugging along pretty quickly. I haven’t gotten any feedback yet, but I did set up a survey to capture their feedback and am anxiously awaiting some results to help nail down some final touches!

I also finished the second draft! I went through and re-read the entire thing last week, tweaking phrasing, word usage, and adding a chapter that I thought I wrote but didn’t.

Once I gather everyone’s feedback, I’ll do a third edit before sending it off to an official editor to get their feedback and make changes before going live with sales.

I’m beyond excited and I can’t wait!

Second Edit Complete!

It’s been a month since my last update and I’ve been hard at work on reconfiguring parts of the story.

Since the last update, a number of things have changed and gotten completed;

Our female lead has gotten a name change — I never liked the name I originally picked, so I went through a brainstorming session (bringing in some others’ opinions, as well) and finally came up with her new name.
The band’s name has been finalized as well — the name in the first draft was a placeholder and I knew that from the very first time I typed that name. The name I picked I feel is strong and fits better with the characters that make up the band.
The second draft is complete — I reworked some of the bits and pieces to make the story tie together a little better. I still have a couple of ideas for things I may change, but I want to get some feedback first. Which brings us to:
I solicited some feedback from friends on the finalized second draft. I have about half a dozen people reading through the book now who are going to provide their feedback to me. I look forward to hearing what other people thought.

I’m still right on schedule for end of September, I think. Though, at this point, I’m at the mercy of other people. I’m hopeful I’ll have enough time to finish by then. Things that are left to do:

Create the artwork for the cover.
Do a final edit.
Have a professional editor read through it.
Publish to Kindle, iBooks and Barnes & Noble store.
(Eventually) record an audio book version (assuming there’s any interest in such a thing.)

I’m getting both nervous and excited. Only one person has read the book entirely through so far and I’m freaking out a bit having six more people read it. I can’t wait to hear what they think!

First Edit Complete!

I was so excited about the progress this week (not to mention busy) that I didn’t have a chance to write a blog about this week’s big milestone: the first edit is complete!

Austin really pulled through and edited the last half of the book in about a week, and I managed to get through all his notes and changes in two days. My eyes are still bothering me from it but I managed to get it done anyway.

While chatting with him as I went through his edits, he let me know that he felt like I took greater care towards the end, saying that the last few chapters had very few edits. Which I found a bit surprising given that the last few chapters seemed to just fly out all at once — I blinked and before I knew it, I had the last chapters and was done.

My one question (so far) to him was whether or not he could predict the outcome — which he couldn’t. I enjoyed that. My whole point (with the story) was the surprise the reader and to end it on a note that would be unexpected but (hopefully) satisfying.

To prepare for the next round of edits I’ve printed a hard copy (which to my surprise was 226 pages and a whole black ink cartridge in my shiny new Epson printer) so I can mark it up with pen. I’ll be on a plane in a little over a week to Vegas for a long weekend and will be doing some story and character editing on the flight there and the flight back. I figure I should have enough time to write some notes and get down some thoughts after I get through a full reading for myself.

I’m really excited that I’m moving through this process at a greater speed now and with Austin’s notes, I feel like I’m almost unstoppable.

In case you’re wondering what the book looks link printed, here’s a picture I took:

Editing Continues and Some Thoughts

I’ve been chugging away at the edits that Austin sent over before he left for a vacation in Greece (I know, I’m jealous too!) and I’d guesstimate I’m a little less than halfway through the list of edits he had.

So far I’ve trimmed a few thousand words out through the various edits, which I think is good.

Going back through and editing has allowed me to read a lot of the actual book myself. It’s helped me realize that there’s some changes I’d like to make.

Most notably, I want to change my lead female’s name — for reasons I won’t get into here.

I also want to change the name of the band — as a placeholder I’ve been using Resolute Resolve, which makes no sense and is flat-out stupid. I’ve known since I started writing that this would be a placeholder, I just have to spend the time to come up with a different name.

I need to revisit describing some of the characters — I’ve done this twice so far already, but need to do it again as now months after writing some of the characters I’m having a hard time remembering what I wanted them to look like.

The story needs some work — there’s certain keys that I wanted to hit to make sure that the end is really powerful. It’s not a twist in the traditional sense, but I think the ending comes as somewhat of a surprise. My hopes is that I pulled it off well, but I know that there’s some work that needs to be done.

I’m still pretty well on schedule for where I wanted to be at this time. I’m hopeful that when Austin gets back from vacation we can plow through the rest of the edits, and then I can use my (fancy new) printer to fire off a printed copy to mark up with a pen.

I was hoping I could do that on the plane on the way to my vacation at the end of the month, but I don’t think that’ll work out with the timing. Perhaps I’m wrong, but time will tell.

Just about halfway through

I’ve been chugging away at doing my first read through and am just about halfway there. It’s such a surreal experience to read your own work, especially since I’ve been reading it on the iPad.

Though I decided the other day that once I’m done with Austin’s edits (which should hopefully be soon), I’m going to print a hard copy to markup with my changes. I’ve been finding things as I’m reading through that would be easier to just jot down on paper, and go back and make those changes. Nothing major, but little things here and there: this reads funny, this character was taller earlier. That sort of stuff.

I also started interviewing some editors through a number of online services, and will hopefully be able to nail that down before I’m done with the actual first draft.

The whole process is taking quite a bit longer than I anticipated and I still have quite a bit of work to go. But I’ll get there. Seeing as how I don’t have a deadline or a publisher to report to, there’s no immediate rush on getting everything done at a specific date or time. Being my own “boss” has its rewards.

Will editing ever end?!

The longer and longer the editing process takes, the more and more I feel like it’s never going to end. It seems like we’ve been editing for months. In some aspects, we have, but it feels like a lot longer than it actually has taken.

My buddy Austin, you know him — the one that’s doing the editing — has been finishing up his Master’s Degree, which is why he hasn’t had a lot of time to finish reading and putting together his edits. I think he finishes up this week, which should allow him some more time to get things done.

I’ve been reading through some chapters in random order myself from time to time. Reading the chapters on their own, and not chronologically, has given me some good insight into each chapter on its own. It’s allowed me to see whether or not the story in that chapter is written well enough to stand on its own.

I haven’t officially written any edits on those chapters myself. My plan is to wait until Austin’s edits are done and then read through the whole thing on my own again. That’ll give me some more insight into the story as a whole, to make sure that I’m comfortable with it before I send it off to a select handful of people I know to read and give their feedback on.

Hopefully I’ll have that process done by the end of June. I’ll gather their feedback in July, incorporate that by mid-July, get it off to a story editor and get it back to finish the last draft by September.

I’ll record the audio book version in early September, and get it all for sale.

All in all, not a bad project for 2013. Keep myself busy, put out a book, and check off something on my bucket list all at once. Not a bad 2013 at all.

Even more editing!

Despite going through his last few weeks of his Masters program, Austin’s been awesome at doing this editing project. I imagine that when all is said and done, he’s probably going to hate me a little bit. I don’t think he realized how much work this would be when I asked him to do it. In fairness, I am paying him, so there’s that.

I did the addition on word count of what we’ve edited so far, and we’re roughly a third done with the first draft’s edit. Making good progress, but I think it’s definitely taking longer than either of us expected it to.

Remind me to never think writing a book is easy ever again. The initial draft was an easier process and took less time than editing it. It’s kind of surprising, when you think about it.

On the upside — once the first draft is edited, all of the spelling and grammatical mistakes should be caught, and I can focus on the content of what it all says in the second draft.

My plan is still to hire a professional story editor once the second draft is done, to make sure that the story works. I may also solicit some friends to read it and just let me know what they think of it. I’m still not positive that the story itself is even any good. Hopefully it is. I’ll be able to solicit Austin’s opinion on the story once he’s done reading everything.

The process has been slow, but rewarding. Having someone else make comments on the work, chapter by chapter, has been great. Though there have been chapters that have comments that make me discouraged, overall the editing process is going quite well.

My goal is to be done with the first draft’s edit by the end of May, and then work on the second draft through June. I’m shooting to have everything done and self-published by the end of September. That includes recording the audio book, which I obviously can’t do until the story is done and completely edited.

That’d make the total turnaround time for this whole project about seven(ish) months, as I started in early March. If I sell 1000 copies, I’ll be happy. That’s my goal. For something I just decided to do, have no backing on, and am financing myself, I think that’s a completely realistic goal. Anything more than that will be cake.

Plus, at 1000 copies, I’ll have made my money back on what I’m spending out of pocket to have the book edited, published, the audio book recorded, and the various other costs associated with this whole thing.

Fingers crossed!

Editing Continues

I’ve been hard at work with my editor buddy chugging our way through the first draft edit that we’re doing. It’s been a pretty slow and grueling process, but on the bright side, we’re making good headway.

Based on the progress we’re making, I’m guessing this will take another 6-8 weeks.

Once that’s done, I’m going to do a whole read-through myself, to see if there’s anything that I want or need to change for myself.

Once that’s done, I’ll hopefully have found a professional story editor to go through the whole thing. That’s assuming of course that Austin and Jen (my friend I’ve mentioned many times) think the story is worth moving forward with. Like I’ve said, I think the story’s good, but others may not like it.

I think I also decided this week that I’d like to do an audio book version too. Not because I think it’ll sell any better than anything else, but because I think it’ll be fun to record and produce an audio book!

The Editor’s First Feedback

I’ve been working with my good buddy, Austin, lately to have him go through my first draft and do a rough edit. From what I’ve read online, that means he goes through and reads the whole thing, pointing out typos, grammatical errors, etc. Of which there are plenty, I’m sure.

He’s also been pointing out things that I haven’t noticed as I wrote: describe this character better, this character said this here and something contradicting here.

We decided, rather than waiting for him to finish the whole thing, that he’d send me a few chapters at a time. That way I can read his feedback, incorporate what he’s said, and not have the daunting task of doing that all at once.

One thing’s obvious — the editing part of this is going to not only take way longer than I thought it would, but it’s also going to take a lot longer than writing the initial first draft.

I went through the feedback this morning for the first four chapters. It took me about 3 hours to incorporate the changes into my first draft. There weren’t that many of them, it was just that going back and forth between his PDF with his notes on it and the editing application I’m using was time consuming. Looking from one screen to the next and trying to find where the two words line up was taking more time than I thought it would.

So the good news is that we’re progressing with the editing of the book! The downside is that it’s taking much longer than I anticipated. With this new schedule and the rewrite I’ll have to do, I’m hoping that I’ll have been able to get the book done by September. I’m setting an internal goal of having it be for sale before my birthday at the end of September.

My best friend is also reading the book, and I’ll be interested to hear what her feedback is. So far I know she’s read through the first five chapters, and she said that it started a bit slow but once she got to chapter 3 she wanted to keep reading to find out what’d happen next. I guess that’s a good sign.

I’m still worried about the whole thing. It’s nerve-racking not knowing whether or not people will like what you’ve written, or sympathize with your characters or story. It’s scary that you’ve invested so much time in something, and it may turn out your story is a giant pile of garbage. I’m hoping that’s not the case, but only time will tell.

If you’ve read the book, I’m hopeful that you’ve enjoyed it. Or if you are reading the book, I hope you like it so far!

Editing Continues

While waiting to hear back from my friends with their feedback and comments, I’ve continued to think of ways to improve the story. Which is kind of backwards, given that I’ve asked someone to edit the first draft.

I’m thinking the characters need to be painted more as pictures. I tried to do my best to describe them as people, but I’m realizing that it’s likely going to be tough for people to imagine what they look like, based on how they’re written. Perhaps going back through the scenes where we meet our main characters and doing a better job of describing them would be beneficial.

I also have some notes about the story itself. While I’m confident that the meat and potatoes (so to speak) are there, I think there’s some tweaking that can be done; dialog enhanced, scenes fleshed out more.

To be honest, I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve never done this before, I’ve never taken any real writing classes (aside from high school English). I’m dying to know what other people think about the story, but don’t want to be that guy who’s nagging them all the time. So I’m trying to be patient and hang in there, waiting for the time to pass and for them to finish reading.

For now, I’ve started outlining the story for my next book. I suppose I have nothing better to do while I wait, right?

Editing: Round 1

I started reading through the first draft myself last week, and got to the fourth chapter. I quickly realized that I was too invested in the story to do the actual editing myself.

So today I compiled a PDF of the first draft and sent it to my buddy Austin, who’s got an eye for editing. He’s going to do the first draft edit for grammar, punctuation and whatnot before I can send it to the story editor.

I’ve also asked him to let me know if there’s anything glaringly wrong with the story or any of the characters. Hopefully there’ll be some positive feedback there.

I also sent an iPad copy to my very best friend Jennifer. She read the first chapter a few weeks back, and I asked if she’d mind reading the whole thing and letting me know what she thought.

To be honest, I’m terrified of this whole process. I’ve said it before, and I stand by it. The process of sharing something so personal with someone, regardless of how well you know them, is terrifying. Not knowing whether or not people are going to be receptive of what you’ve written, or if it’s not as good as you’d hoped. Not knowing whether or not your characters are likable or not. Not knowing whether or not your structure and chapters make sense. All of it is terrifying, and it’s keeping me up at night.

Like I’ve said, I’m not out to sell millions of copies with this. If no one buys it, I don’t care. I just wanted to write a book and get it out there. And so far, I’ve come close to doing that.

I bought the ISBNs today, though they’re not really required for an eBook, it ensures that if I ever get any printed copies of it made, I’m covered with the same ISBN number. Or at least that’s what I read on the website that sells them.

Hopefully in a week or two I’ll have the first round of edits back, along with the feedback of my friends. From there I’ll likely do some story touching up, maybe revamp some of the characters, tweak the plot points or something. I guess it really all depends on how the feedback comes in from my friends. When I know more, you’ll know more.

The Author Website

As you may have noticed, I have a website here. Shocking, I know! What you may not know is that I started building the website before I even started writing the book.

My day job consists of many things to do with websites – working on them, building them, helping people with theirs – so naturally I knew I’d need a website for the book.

The domain name (www.mjandreau.com) was purchased years ago, as an alternative to my personal blog’s domain for a job hunt that I did back in 2009. Since I still owned the domain, I figured that my writing persona would be M. Jandreau, and opted to start building the site here.

Building the website myself has been a fun experience. I’ve been able to use some great existing software (WordPress), and a bunch of add-ons (called plugins) that are specific for authors that I’ve never had the chance to use before.

The site’s using a number of cool things – newsletter manager, download tracking, client testimonials, event managers, and book managers. It’s helped me get the site all ready for everything I’d need to manage it and sell my book.

I’ve also done some behind the scenes work so that when/if I release a second book, I can easily transition into having this whole website about a single book to having and selling multiple books.

It’s been a fun (and necessary) experience, and at this point I’m mostly done. I just need the cover art and to start selling the book so I can get the links on the homepage (which I realize by the time you may read this, will have already been done) to finish up.