Third Draft – M. Jandreau

Third Draft is done!

I finished the third draft a week and a half ago and think I’ve incorporated all of the editor’s feedback in a way that makes sense and works for the story.

The next step is that I have to go through the process of reading the entire third draft again, page by page, chapter by chapter, making sure that all of these little edits I did to the various chapters and structures and layout actually make sense.

While you’re editing, it’s easy to just pick a spot somewhere and drop a whole new chapter in. But what if it doesn’t make sense in the context of the whole book? And what if I say something about a character in that new chapter that hasn’t actually been discovered until later in the book.

Continuity is important to a book. Much like when you realized something out-of-order happened on Lost, you’d notice it even more in a book. Going through and finding those things is always a challenge and one that you hope your editor can help with. Thankfully, my editor’s awesome and always catches those mistakes.

I’m planning to start reading tonight and hopefully finish in a couple of weeks. Then it’s back to writing and editing for a final draft before sending it back to Lauren for her last edits.

Fingers crossed that she likes this version better than the first draft I sent over!

Third Draft in progress

I won’t lie, when I first got Lauren’s feedback on my second draft, I was disheartened. I wanted to just throw the whole thing away and give up. With the lack of success of A Sour Chord and the negative feedback for the (then current) draft of My Last Days, I thought it might be time to end my experiment.

Then it hit me. It didn’t matter how successful I was at this. It didn’t matter how many copies I sold or how many books I’d sign. What mattered was that I got to do something I enjoy doing and that I’m financially stable enough to be able to spend money on artists and editors and promotions, even if I don’t make that money back.

So I hit My Last Days again. Hard. In the face. Okay, maybe not in the face, but I did trim a lot of fat already and added some more lean bits to the story. That’s a terrible metaphor, I’m sorry.

On July 1st, I started the third draft. I’m trying to incorporate as much of Lauren’s feedback as I can, while still staying try to the story that I set out to tell.

While, yes, I was upset by the feedback at first, as I’ve been editing, I realize that a lot of what she said is true. There’s a lot of validity to it and it’s proven quite helpful.

I’m still struggling with how to accomplish some of what I wanted to, while maintaining the changes that she thinks will be helpful, but I’ll get there. I’m already well past the date I wanted to be done with the book, so at this point it doesn’t much matter anymore. I’m on my own time now and hope to be done when I’m done. When I think it’s ready.

I’ve been setting aside an hour every night during the week to come back up to my desk to work on it. I’ve found that it’s too hard to just sit for an extra hour at the end of my workday, so I finish up, go downstairs, have some dinner, relax for a bit and then come back upstairs at 8pm after my brain’s settled down a bit.

The darkness seems to help some too – as the sun sets behind me and the room slowly darkens, it, somehow, helps my brain focus on what I’m trying to focus on.

Speaking of focusing, I use a wonderful OS X app called Alfred that makes a lot of what I do in my day job easier. I built a little “workflow” in it that helps me focus by forcing me to quit every app other than Scrivener (the app which I write in) and blocks all sorts of websites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. It also queues up my “movie score and classical music” playlist and plays random tracks from that. I’ve found that writing to music with lyrics distracts me, so I write only when I’m listening to instrumental tracks. It helps me not sit in silence, but also helps me motivate myself with the changes in tempo as each track changes.

So, if you’re out there and still following along, thank you. I know I don’t have a huge fanbase, so I appreciate that you’re still along for this ride, this experiment, with me. I hope to have My Last Days done at some point in the future so that I can share it with you. Hopefully you’ll enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed working on it.

Back to Editing!

It’s here! It’s here! It’s finally here! Sorry, I’m a bit excited.

I got the final edits from my editor over the weekend after what felt like a few days short of eternity. Now that I’ve seen the complete edits, I understand why they took so long. To say that Word’s “Track Changes” contained a lot of red would be a drastic understatement. There was red everywhere — and not just grammatical or spelling corrections, but a lot of story critique which was exactly what I wanted (and needed!)

As of yesterday, I’ve started plowing through the edits. Slashing chapters, merging paragraphs, and destroying my overuse of negativity.

One of the most helpful things in the entire editing process was Lauren’s summary. She pointed out a bunch of flaws with the story, the characters, and my writing habits. Most of which I’ve been oblivious to. Having other people read the book has definitely been helpful, but having an editor read the book and point out what I’m doing wrong has been infinitely helpful.

I’ve enjoyed reading the comments, too. It hasn’t all been negative (which I sort of feared, from the get-go) and some of the comments have been inspiring. For the first time in a number of months, I’m feeling positive about this whole decision.

According to my notes, I started writing A Sour Chord on March 5th, 2013. Just over 11 months ago. My goal is to finish editing and be completely done with all of the rewrites I’ve got laid out for me by that same date of this year. Thus making the entire process take exactly a year.

After that I just have to have some cover art designed and then publish the book to the various places I plan on selling it. (Amazon, iTunes and Barnes & Noble, to start.) I don’t expect much in the way of sales, but hopefully someone somewhere will read it and enjoy it.

I’ve said from the get go — I’m not in this to be famous or make a zillion dollars. It’s just something I’ve always wanted to do and see through to completion. It’s a bucket list item, if you will. And I’m glad I’m going to finish it.

Process Stalled

The editing process has come to sort of a screeching halt. It seems like that, anyway. I guess I didn’t anticipate that this would take so long. I finished the first draft 9 months ago and have been going through the editing process since.

So far, I’ve:

Had Austin read through the whole thing and do a rough edit to improve the story and fix any typographical errors.
Had a handful of friends and family read it for their feedback
Added to the ending a bit and added a few chapters throughout.
Began the full edit for the final draft.

It’s the final draft edit that seems to be sucking my will to live.

Honestly, the longer this whole process takes, the more discouraged I get and less likely I am to finish this thing. Which is pretty terrible, given the time and money I’ve invested into it. It’s just how I am, though. I lose interest when things take too long to finish.

I’m trying to stick it out, I’m just frustrated with the entire process and myself. I had hoped to be done by my birthday at the end of September. That slipped and I set the expected end date to December 31st, that clearly won’t happen as we’re only about 10% done with the final edits. Hopefully now that my editor’s on break from her teaching schedule, we can plow through the rest of it and be done.

Then all that’s left is the artwork (which I should probably have someone get started on) and publishing.

Then I can finally check off “become a published author” from my bucket list. I’ll likely finish up the second book sometime after that, but I think I’m going to need a break from this whole thing for at least a month or two once this is all done.

Or will I? I haven’t touched My Last Days in nearly 2 months, so perhaps I can just jump right back in there and finish that first draft. I know that one’s going to be kind of a nightmare to edit though, my thoughts have been all over the place and I recognize that I need some major help with that story. I’m about 40,000 words in and I still don’t really know what it’s about. I’ve just been typing and thinking like a madman when I was working on it. Hopefully it’ll come to me and won’t end up being about something that’s been beaten to death.

As the year comes to a close, I am thankful for all that I’ve accomplished. Not just in writing a first (and second) draft of something I’ve had kicking around in my head for the better part of my 20s, but also for other things in my life that I’ve finally gotten done. It’s been a whirlwind year and one that I’m (mostly) proud of. Here’s hoping that 2014 will be as great for you as I anticipate it will for me. Happy New Year!

Editing Seems to Take Forever

Through no fault of anyone’s, it seems like this whole editing process is taking way longer than I anticipated or want it to.

Six weeks ago, I put work on My Last Days on hold, so I could get back into the mindset of the characters for A Sour Chord, so the editing would be easier as each round of edits (a few chapters at a time) came in from my editor. From the get go, I had no idea that this process would take so long. I knew it’d take longer than the amount of time it took me to write the first draft, but I had no idea that it’d be by a factor of 8 or 9.

Since I’ve been feeling stagnant with things, I decided to jump back into My Last Days today and keep writing. My creative mind needs to keep moving or I’m likely to keep coming up with ideas for more stories to write when I’m done with these first two and seeing as how I have no idea if these’ll even sell, it’s probably not best to put the metaphorical cart before the horse, as they said in olden times.

It’s been six weeks since I last wrote anything in My Last Days, so it took some time this morning to reacquaint myself with the characters and where I was going with the story last time I wrote. I used iBooks (which is now available on my computer and not just my iPad and iPhone) and read through the first handful of chapters and the last handful that I’d written.

Then I began writing. I typed and typed and got stuck. I forced myself to get through close to 500 words before I just wasn’t feeling it anymore. I’m not sure if it’s because of the lack of writing over the last six weeks, or if I’m just not feeling the story, or what’s happening, but today is not a day where I’ll knock out a few thousand words.

I do feel a little bit better since I’ve written something but not as great as I’d like to feel and not as productive.

I guess I’ll try again tomorrow (or this afternoon if I feel up to it) and continue to chug away at the edits for A Sour Chord as they come in. I’m hoping that I’ll have the first book done sometime early in 2014 and make it available for sale. Fingers crossed that it gets done eventually.

My Last Days on Hold, Back to A Sour Chord

I didn’t realize it had been so long since I’d updated the progress blog here. Over the last three weeks, a bit has changed with things.

My new (wonderful) editor, Lauren, sent me her initial feedback earlier in this month, which I’ve read at least half a dozen times by now. I agreed on most of what she said and will work a lot of her feedback into the story as we go through the (hopefully) final rewrite in the next month or two.

In order to get back into the mindset of A Sour Chord, I’ve ceased working on My Last Days. Not for good, just so that I can get my mind back into that of my characters from A Sour Chord. I don’t know of many (if any) authors that write two books at the same time and it’s probably because it’s so difficult to jump back and forth between sets of characters, stories, locations, etc.

As of now, I’m waiting on Lauren to start sending me detailed feedback on a chapter-by-chapter basis. That’ll allow me to go through and either edit or flat-out rewrite parts of the book to get to the goal that we’re setting out for the ending. The overall ending won’t change (I stood my ground on that, despite her recommendation to change it), but the story that gets us there will change a little bit.

What I’ve learned during the editing process

It’s difficult to find an editor — I didn’t factor cost into this at all, I’d gladly have spent whatever it took to find someone that I felt would take this seriously — despite just being something I’m doing on a whim. I counted my emails and I emailed back and forth with 15 editors before finding something that I felt took me seriously enough to want to do the project. Many of them were either outrageous in their pricing, didn’t want to offer me a sample edit (why would you pay someone when you don’t know what their style of editing is?), or said they’d get back to me and never did. A very frustrating process.
Go with your gut — if an editor comes across as pushy or difficult during this process, they’re probably going to be pushy or difficult to work with too. I’m glad I didn’t go with a handful of them that were really unpleasant via their emails.
It takes a long time — I finished writing the book nearly six months ago, hoping to have it published by now. It’s left me feeling somewhat defeated that I missed my own (admittedly completely arbitrary) goal. Having friends read it and give me their input as well as the actual editing process has been mentally draining, but hopefully worth it in the long run.

From here, the final edit/draft will be completed. The cover will be designed. The book will be on sale. And hopefully, just hopefully, at least a couple of people will buy it.

Then I’ll finish My Last Days and start this whole horrible process all over again.

A Sour Chord update & Progress on My Last Days

It didn’t occur to me until I just typed the title of this post that both of my first two books have three word titles. Completely unintentional, I assure you.

Since my last update, a number of things have happened. So let’s catch you up, shall we?

I launched this here website. It’s not entirely finished as a lot of the behind the scenes stuff that I built is relying on the first book being done and for sale.
I finally found an editor that I’ve hired to do the final edit before the book can go on sale. Turns out one of my good buddy’s fiance is getting her Master’s in Creative Writing, so that’s a good fit. I look forward to being done with that process — the whole editing part has been my least favorite so far.
I’ve made progress on the second book — My Last Days — which I’m 25,000+ words into. You can see the progress of the word count there on the right in the progress bar (along with the progress bar on A Sour Chord.)

What’s next on my agenda?

Finish the edit for A Sour Chord
Have the cover art designed
Publish the book and hope someone buys it (other than my mom.)
Continue working on My Last Days and repeat the process.

Is it wrong or am I insane that I already have an idea for the next book after My Last Days? I keep coming up with these ideas of stories that I knew or told or heard when I was younger and think they’d make good books. Since this whole process is rather easy, I figure why not? I’m in my 30s now and have the time and resources to do it, so why not be an author? I may not be the next Stephen King or J. K. Rowling, but I’m doing the best I can!

Third Draft really complete this time!!

As I sit here watching Die Hard on this fine Saturday morning, I thought I’d post an update on where things are.

I finished the third draft early this week. There’s around eight new chapters and three or four have been expanded further, but were previously existing chapters.

I’ve also spoken with a few more editors and am planning to make a final choice shortly, once I hear back from one more (that came highly recommended). Pretty exciting stuff!

At this point, I’m just looking forward to being done with this whole part of the process.

I’ve started thinking through ideas for book covers and have discussed it with the designer who’ll be doing the work — she had some ideas, as well. So hopefully we’ll move forward with that in time for the edit to be complete.

It’s looking more and more like this is going to take longer than I originally thought, which bums me out a bit. But it’s a learning process and I’ll know better for next time, I suppose.

I can’t wait for you all to read the final book. It’s something I’ve come to love over the last five months and I hope you will, too!

Third Draft Complete!

Based on the feedback I received from the four folks that finished reading A Sour Chord, I’ve revised the book to complete the third draft. I’m really pleased with the first feedback!

I sent out the book to a total of 7 people and heard back from 4, so I’ve done some revisions based on that feedback.

At this point, I don’t think the other three folks will send along their feedback, so I proceeded without them.

Based on that feedback, I wrote four more chapters, expanded on three, and gave some more backstory to certain parts of things. I think, at this point, I’m 100% done. So what’s left?

Hire a real editor. Someone that’ll go through, read the whole thing, and tell me what needs to change.
Have the cover artwork done.
Incorporate editor’s changes.
Publish.

I’m shooting to have this whole thing done by the end of September, but I think that’ll be a bit tight, given how long the editing process has taken so far. We’ll see.

I’m happy with the progress and third draft. I can’t wait to get this out there and see what others think.