Update – Ran into another case of time managementitis, and had to spend the bulk of Easter Weekend wrapping up paid work before the Monday deadline. Before that, though, I did get back into the detective story. I came up with a reason why the love interest definitely needs to have a showdown with her dad. Hint: he was a church elder before he became a zombie hunter, and lately he’s been talking about the Biblical story of Lot and his daughters. Look it up; it’s a doozy. The woman should have no trouble at all now turning against her father, and with the readers’ blessing. That’s one problem solved. I also came up with a much better action for the writer’s revenge. I hinted at it in the first draft, but only recently decided on switching things up. It eliminates filler and makes more sense. I’ll be getting back to that later this morning. I’ve been thrown off track already this week by the discovery of a puddle of water on the floor of my laundry room, and the secondary discovery that my plumber won’t poke around under a mobile home. You have to hire specialists now. The other plumber I called won’t go under trailers either, but they’re willing to send a guy out to check it over. It may be an inside leak in the washing machine, or rainwater seeping in from somewhere. I won’t know until Friday, which is the soonest he can get here. In the meantime, I mop periodically. It’s always something.
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The above illustrates why I don’t have more books out, and why it takes me so long to finish something. It’s not just writer’s blocks, depression and life shit happening. I can, eventually, get a draft done. But then what?
Back in the days of yore, when I read how-to-write books and magazines, one repeated bit of advice was, “Finish the draft, then let it sit for (a week, a month, however long you feel comfortable with).” It’s to let that first hot thrill of creation die down so on the next pass you can view your work with a bit of distance and catch all the fubars and logic errors you missed while you were typing. Like Maggie having green eyes and a husband on page 27 and then being blue-eyed and single six chapters later. Or—one of my personal favorites, delivered by Stephen King himself in The Tommyknockers—a character who lost all her teeth several chapters in, but towards the end bares those now-missing teeth at the protag. She must have slipped off to the dentist between chapters.
I imagine this is where plotters have the advantage over pantsers. Plotters know their story from start to finish before they even start typing. Pantsers make it up as they go. Hence the bright idea that initially kicked off the story may no longer even be relevant by the time you get to the end. Characters may need to be added, or cut, or given their own separate story if they’re not important to the one you’re writing but still try to take over anyway. (All of this has happened to me.)
Here’s where my slow writing habits actually pay off. By the time I finally finish a first draft, it’s been so long since I wrote the beginning all the mistakes practically leap off the page at me. Also, all the changes I made along the way are still relatively fresh, so I can go back and set them up properly, and cut any superfluous subplots or characters in the process. By the time I reach the end it’ll have aged properly and I’ll know whether it works or not, or if it too needs to change.
That’s just the second draft, though. It doesn’t mean the book is finished. How long do you let a story cool down before you start revising? When do you know it’s truly done and fit to be sent out into the world?
Answer: you don't. It depends. I wrote the first draft of this book longhand two years ago. I let it sit for a couple of months before I got back to it. I’m not even through halfway through typing and and I’m still getting fresh ideas. This is what froze me on the series. What if I publish Book #1, get up to Book #3 and suddenly get a hot inspiration that would vastly improve the series as a whole, but contradicts most of (done and published) Book #1?
As I’ve said many times before: my brain and I have issues.
Which leads into another problem related to my slow pace. Back in the days when traditional publishing was the only game in town, it was okay if you only published one book a year. Two if you wrote genre and were popular. If you wanted to write more than that, you had to use a pen name (which, to return to Stephen King, is how "Richard Bachman’s" career started). But now we’re in the age of ebooks and self-pubbing, and all bets and rules are off. Prolific writers can put out a book a month, if they’re so inclined. There’s no publishing company to whine about flooding the market. In fact, oversaturation is encouraged. If somebody likes your book, they’ll want to read more, and they’ll want to read it now. If you’re writing a series, you can publish an installment every month if you’re up to it. In fact, a brisk schedule’s encouraged. We’ve got short attention spans these days. We don’t want to wait any more. We find something we like, we want to binge. Wait too long and the audience gets antsy and switches the channel. Or moves on to another writer.
Some writers can pop out a book every month (or more, if they’re writing to a formula. This is handy if you’re doing romance.) Some will actually be good. The bulk will probably be crappy because they weren’t given time to lie fallow between drafts. Some may not even get a second draft. If the readers don’t care then it doesn’t really matter. As a writer, though, you should care, unless you’ve signed a contract and you’re on a deadline. Or you’re hacking out stuff for quick cash. In that case, do what you have to and let mistakes slide. That's what the editors are for.
What I’m going to have to do is follow the second bit of advice that tended to come with the first one. Write your book, set it aside for a cooling-off period—and promptly start your next book. Pretty soon you’ll have a pile of drafts. Then you go back to the first one and revise. And so on down the line. At some point one of them will be ready to sub. You’ll know which one, and when. Send it out, start a new one, continue revising the others. When it sells and readers clamor for more, you’ll be ready for 'em.
That’s what I’ll be doing. At some point I will be writing a book a month. Doesn’t mean I’ll be subbing it the following month. Eventually I’ll have enough in the queue to start sending them out. Then there will be a deluge, and everybody will say, “OMG, she’s fast!” Once I’ve got a loyal following, and sufficient sales, maybe then and only then will I be able to slow down.
If we get to around September and my books start appearing on Amazon, you’ll know this worked. If not, it’s not because the plan itself is bad. It’s because I screwed up, or lazed off, or got carpal tunnel or something. Or injured my leg because the floorboards in the laundry room rotted out due to the leak. Well, that’s getting looked at Friday. Updates to come next week. See you then.
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