While I’m editing my Her Demonic Majesty–which got pretty good last night, as there was the tossing of black death balls, magical people running scared, and one burning wizard getting tossed across a street by a demoness–I’m pretty amazed at the pace of the story. Not only does it feel like a fast read to me, but the entire span of the story goes from afternoon on the 17th of August, and ends on the morning of the 20th of the same month. I was chatting with The Muse last night, and even though she knows all about this novel–she is The Muse, after all: she knows all when it comes to my writing–she commented, “That goes by pretty fast!”
I commented that I thought it was necessary. One, if you put a lot of stuff in about how the main character, Jeannette, spends all her time trying to learn how this magical stuff works, then you have a story much longer than the current 86,000 word novel that currently exists. Two, I didn’t want to do that, because I was writing this during NaNoWriMo, so I wanted to finish it inside of thirty days. Third, as I explained, “You throw her into the situation, it forces her to bond with the only two people who can help her, and there’s more interaction between them, rather than a lot of scenes of her trying to learn magic.”
As I’ve stated before, Demonic Majesty has a good Farscape Start feel to it. Jump into that fire, get burned, then put yourself out and have a go at things again. Learn fast, Grasshopper, or you’re going to end up in a messy way before long. It’s a good way to run an action movie–at good one, at least–and it’s not a bad way to plot out a novel.
(I do realize, as well, that once Jeannette loses her “home”–aka, The Chicago Castle–in the novel, she only has about 48 hours before all the traps are cleared and the bad guys get all her magical goodies. So that factor puts her in even more of a time crunch–even though, when she does return to The Castle, it’s for entirely different reasons . . .)
There’s been some talk of late about writers who self-publish, and those who are lying in way to read their works. The tone of the article is such that it makes out any writer who is publishing one novel a year to be some kind of super-slacker who isn’t feeding the ebook jones of their readers–who, I should mention, are probably bitching about how they had to pay more than $0.99 for your eighty thousand word novel while sipping on their $5 mocha latte grande at Starbucks. The feeling is one of, “You have to keep writing, and putting things out there for people to read–and make it more than affordable!–or you’re going to sink into the Swamp of Forgotten Authors–”
Yeah, yeah.
I’m the first one to say if you are writer, then write. Write every day. Even if it’s five hundred words a day, in time that adds up.
But I’ve learned something else from this self-publishing thing I did with one of my stories: it’s not enough to write your story, you need to edit it. And edit again. And, if you have time, let someone read it over before you throw it out to the Masses for consumption. When I published Kuntilanak, I had it edited as I was writing it, and then I did another edit on it before I put it up on Smashwords. And because of readers who were kind enough to contact me and say, “Um, I think you need to fix this . . .”, I’ve edited it twice more into what I believe is a very, very clean version.
Kuntilanak was only 24,000 words. I’m now working with a novel that’s three and a half times longer than Kuntilanak, and what? I’m going to breeze through it and put it up for sale, then have someone come along and maybe tell me, “I pay three bucks for ur novel, and it sux! U got 2 many spelln mistakes!” Nope, don’t want to have that happen.
Writing is easy. Telling a story is hard. Presenting that story that is 99.9999% free of spelling and grammatical errors is even harder. Rather than publishing articles that tell the poor writer what a freakin’ slacker they are because they aren’t writing fast enough for their public, how about a few more articles about how difficult writing is not only from the point of creating the story, but what it takes to get that story out in a way that doesn’t make it look as if the first draft was done in crayon by a four year old?
Wow, can you imagine all those articles supporting the poor writer?
No . . . I can’t either.
May 24, 2012 at 4:55 am
*sigh* I wish there were. I was talking to a friend at work yesterday and he was complaining (as many do) about how long a wait there is between GRRM’s books. And all I could think (other than, damn it I hope that old man hurries up) is that he is crafting a 1000 page novel with a dozen major plot-lines and thrice-that-number of ‘main’ characters. Give the poor bastard a break. It takes TIME to craft those tales, to make sure their interwoven in a meaningful way, and then, dear God, for someone to edit it.
One of my biggest fears is that I will have spent a ridiculous amount of hours of my life putting together this story, polishing, editing it, blah blah, and that I’ll finally release it and get nothing but comments like the one you imagined in the post. And worse, I’ll probably be thrilled to know at least ONE person read it. Poor, poor, neglected Pirate’s Booty. LOL.
May 24, 2012 at 5:06 am
I know there’s been a lot of people complaining of late about how GRRM has sort of wrote himself into a rather complicated corner by maybe making his series a little too complicated, but that’s neither here or there . . .
I’ve had the conversation with others that unless you write, you have no idea what goes into creating a readable story. And when I see these articles about how you’re slacking your ass off if you ain’t producing books for people to read, I wanna go after the people who perpetuate the stereotype that writers are magical typewriter machines, that all we gotta do is sit at the computer and things come out of our fingers!
Thank you for making the reading public believe we’ve nothing better to do than dump as much crap onto the Internet as possible. Maybe that’s the goal of some writers–it’s not mine.
Now, I’m not saying “Don’t do anything but one story a year–” Nope. You can work on a number of things if you like. But be realistic about it. Writing and publishing are two completely different animals, and if we screw up the later, the former isn’t going to matter one damn bit.
May 24, 2012 at 5:14 am
“Writing and publishing are two completely different animals, and if we screw up the later, the former isn’t going to matter one damn bit.”
This.
May 24, 2012 at 5:14 am
Is true?
May 24, 2012 at 5:24 am
I think so. As far as making a ‘career’ out of it. The devil is in the details, they always say, and especially in this new e-book world where there are SO. many unedited works being uploaded and released upon the world, if you don’t put out a properly ‘polished’ piece… that’s all that people will look at.
How many reviews have you read where the person comments, “The story was pretty good, but I couldn’t get through it because the author misspelled blah blah, forgot a bunch of punctuation, and so on”? I’ve read plenty. If you’re not going to do it right, don’t bother releasing it. That’s my opinion. Write for yourself, keep it in your hard drive, share it with your loved ones… but don’t put it up on Amazon half-assed just because you wrote it.
There’s a lot more to the process than just… type type type. Here’s 50,000 words. Click upload. Done. NEXT!
May 24, 2012 at 5:30 am
No! It’s all magical! I have a unicorn who comes in and breathes on my computer, and suddenly it’s all rainbows and pretty sparkles! Oh, sure: there’s always a few unicorn farts, but I usually ignore that last part.
I take reviews in stride–if I ever got them, that is! Really, though: some of the “reviews” I’ve seen look more like trolling, with more than a few attacks on things that don’t look as if it had anything to do with the story in question. That’s another fear for this online publishing world, and that’s dealing with people who are gonna trash you because they can.
May 24, 2012 at 5:14 am
I agree with you, ppl think that we slack off, but the thing is writers like us need to make their own book as good as they can, for the readers. But I guess not everyone understand that writing is easy and telling a story is hard
Thanks for this piece of your mind you are sharing… Best of wishes for your work
May 24, 2012 at 5:17 am
You’re completely right. For someone who isn’t creative, there is little understanding of the creative process. It’s just sit at the computer and write, and it’s all great, yes? No. It’s a lot of work. I’ve said before, “Anyone can write; not everyone can put those words together in a way that makes sense and is entertaining.”
May 24, 2012 at 9:27 pm
Stumbled into your blog and I’ve found a lot of really good posts. I don’t really know how I got here, but I can’t seem to leave now! Keep up the good writing. I’ll be sure to try and come back for more soon.
May 24, 2012 at 9:30 pm
There’s plenty there; I just finished up my first year. Have any questions, ask. And enjoy!
May 24, 2012 at 11:46 pm
Most days I do manage to write something. I just need to condence that all into one project and finish it. Ha Ha. Seriously though, I find myself anticipating “Her Demonic Majesty” with some eagerness. I’ll defiantely pick it up when it’s out!
May 25, 2012 at 3:53 am
I want to get Her Demonic Majesty out very badly now. I’m discovering just how much I like the story.
May 25, 2012 at 12:06 am
Mr. Raymond Frazee, I just bought an e book ( for my Criminal Justice class ) for $ 75. ( $ 150 at Barnes and Nobles ), so I was surprised to see the figure 99 c in your post. Do you already have a novel up to read ?
May 25, 2012 at 3:52 am
I have two, actually: one horror, one erotica. If you follow this link to my Smashwords profile, you’ll see the stories. Both are available for $2.99, and are available for different ereaders. Kunitlanak is also available at Barnes and Nobles.