Drawing from the Well
Chapters Edited: 39!
Chapters to Edit: 0!
It’s done!! I finished editing my book Friday night. It feels so good to “close the book” on this process and move on. I’ll talk about how I divide my writing process in the Well Chat today, but being able to move to the next phase has me very excited.
Considering that, Drawing from the Well is going to shift again. Obviously, there’s no editing progress that needs to be tracked any longer so we’re going to be tracking two things now: 1) How many query letters I’ve sent and 2) Progress on Book Two. So you’ll see all of that tomorrow, but for now:
Queries Sent: 1
Total Queries: 1
Filling the Well
That Hideous Strength: 60%
Elegy: Page 20 of 89
The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections: COMPLETE! (Book 14 of 25 in Project Bookworm 2019)
Last Banquet was exquisite. It is no wonder that it is up for a Hugo award this year. I can’t even describe why this novelette is so good without spoiling it so let’s do this: here’s the link – The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections. Go read it and let me know what YOU think. It’s incredible to me. I may have found a new author to love.
Polishing the Well
I haven’t blogged all weekend. It’s been a doozy. We had TWO weddings Saturday, so my wife split her team…and us. I was at one wedding while she was at another. It was an incredibly long day, longer even than normal, so we were exhausted when we got home. Then I got up yesterday morning and got some work done and then we cleaned the house because we had some friends come over to celebrate Lora’s birthday (yes, it was 4/3, this was just the first chance the four of us had to get together). They brought Guinness Stew and Irish Cream Pie and it was ALL DELICIOUS! Now, it’s back to the normal routine.
Well Chat
My Phases of Writing and Where We Are Now
To that end, let’s talk about my current process in writing. There’s a pre-writing phase where I design the world and the magic systems and the premise and the characters and all the ingredients that go into the cake (or pie if you’re a lunatic – see the debate here.
There’s A LOT of pre-production that goes into this phase. I have 3 separate documents that feed into this, but at the end of it, my world is mostly-formed. We’ll call this Phase 1 – World Building (although there is A LOT of writing that goes into this phase that never finds it to the final page).
Phase 2 is Outlining. I have two different documents that feed into this. One asks me questions to build my character arc(s) while the other asks additional questions to build up the support for the story. Between the two, I build my outline. There’s a lot of stream-of-consciousness that goes into this part.
Phase 3 is Sceneing. This is where I am with Book Two now. Book Two is also first time I’m conducting this phase in yWriter; Book One was done on custom note cards (which I still have the templates for). This is currently a long process because it’s a lot of figuring things out.
Phase 4 is Drafting. This lets me take my scene frameworks (my bones) and fill in the text that eventually becomes the manuscript. I’m hoping this will go faster this time since I’m taking so much time laying my scenes out. I should have no questions to answer. Now, the massive rewrite I did last year basically had a leg in Drafting and the other in Editing. Most people would call that Revision, but I don’t break that out; that’s part of Editing for me (see Structural Edits…guess that needs to be a future post).
Phase 5 is Editing of which you’ve seen a lot of discussion lately. This includes structural edits, line edits, copy edits, and proofreading, all of which are complete at this point. After that is where I am now with Book One which is Agenting. Phase 6 is largely unexplored territory for me. The last time I was here was two years ago which sounds unreal. I can’t believe it’s been that long since I decided to take a step back, retool some things, and seek an editor. All that work has paid off in spades, though, as I’ve arrived at the best draft ever.
The final phase, Phase 7, is publication. I’ve read a lot about this but know nothing from first hand experience. Phase 6 was the hard stop last time. This time, we’re going to make it to and through Phase 7. This book will become reality and I feel like it will be relatively soon.
So that’s how I divide the writing process. Every author has their method (or madness depending on when you ask them) but this is mine. I hope you enjoyed this twisted trip into my psyche. Have a great week.
May the tide carry you to safer shores.
BSG