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.