For the last month I’ve been working on re-publishing my first novel, Doctor Luke’s Assistant. Actually, I’ve been working on it much longer than that. Last summer I re-read it on my Nook, marking places where I found an error or where I thought the writing could be improved. I did that in anticipation of writing and publishing a sequel to it. Just yesterday I put the finishing touches (I think) on Preserve The Revelation, and will publish it in about two weeks.

I started writing Preserve The Revelation in October, 2012, as part of a four-book trial writing period. PTR didn’t get “selected”, so I worked on other things. Until September 2016, when I picked it up again and began writing. In the summer before that, knowing PTR was coming, I re-read DLA, knowing I would want to re-publish it before publishing PTR. I finished PTR on January 14, 2017, and immediately shifted to DLA.

One of the things I wanted to do with DLA was change places to contractions. Early when I was writing it, I got advice that people back then didn’t talk in contractions, that they were much more formal than that. As a result, I wrote things such as “Let us eat” and “I will go with you tomorrow”, instead of Let’s eat, and I’ll go with you tomorrow. Did people speak and write in contractions in the 1st Century? I don’t know, but I suspect that every era has colloquial ways of shortening their speech. So, in the 1st Century, speaking in Greek or Aramaic, people would have shortened their speech and writing, as we’d say “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” As a result, the most common criticism of DLA was that it was stiff. How much did lack of contractions contribute to that? I figured quite a bit.

When I reread DLA, I found about two dozen typos, but there were hundreds if not thousands of places where contractions would lessen the stiffness of the dialog and narrative. I did search and replace for common word combinations reduced to contractions in English. As a result it shortened the book by over 1,000 words, I think closer to 2,000 words. That was a lot of searching and replacing.

I had that work done in mid-February, and shifted back to PTR for the first round of edits. Once those were done, I went back and forth between the two books. I made the print version file of DLA final, uploaded it to CreateSpace, and waited for the proof to arrive. I started a third round of edits on PTR. The two progressed simultaneously at that point. Last Friday I uploaded the print file of DLA to CreateSpace, after a couple of failed attempts that I didn’t understand, and waited for their automated system to tell me it was okay. That okay came at midnight, so this afternoon I made that my main task. Got it done around 2 p.m.

Well, that wasn’t my only main task. I had to make two last minute changes in the Kindle version. I did that, uploaded it, checked it on the on-line viewer, and saw it had a mistake. So I went through it again, this time getting it right. That was done somewhere around 3 p.m., I think. Then I typed the third round of edits in PTR, which I finished in manuscript Sunday morning (not going to church because of a lingering cold). Those were done around 5:30 p.m., at which time I exited The Dungeon to go upstairs and fix supper.

So, this weekend, while prevented from doing outside work due to my cold and to the rain-snow combination on Saturday, I made major progress on writing. I didn’t work on stocks, or filing. I did complete entries in the checkbook, which had been lost for a week. But except for that, it was all writing, and it felt good. Now, it’s on to making the Smashwords edition, and working on an almost complete short story—as well as finishing touches on PTR, of course.

No, that’s not of a prize fight. That’s rounds of edits in my novel Preserve The Revelation.

Though, I’m not sure but that thinking about novel writing, or maybe any book writing, might not be better described in terms of a boxing match. In this corner is The Manuscript, in rough draft. It needs much work to be able to win the fight. It’s rough around the edges, maybe even in the middle. It has great potential, but can it be molded into a quality work?

In the other corner, is Mild-Mannered Author. He thinks he can win this fight and make Manuscript do anything he thinks it should. But does he know his characters? Does he manage conflict in a way that keeps the reader engaged and turning pages? Does he know scenes and sequels; or, if he doesn’t know that writing technique, does he intuitively grasp the principle behind it and pace the book according to it? Does he understand the Magic Paragraph, and does he space these throughout the book? Can he even find his notes from the conferences where those concepts were taught?

How many rounds will this take? For the prequel to this, Doctor Luke’s Assistant, I think I went through four rounds. That was my first novel, and should take longer to craft to perfection, right? If that took four rounds, surely this one will take only two.

I e-mailed a copy of the Word file to my next beta reader, asking him to have it back to me by March 1. I’ll print a clean copy of it tomorrow, to take with me as I travel this week. I’ll be on a plane to Atlanta on Tuesday, to attend the annual conference of the International Erosion Control Association there from Wednesday through Friday, returning home late on Friday. I’m hoping in those days to get all the way through it myself. I’ll hole up in my hotel room for three nights and read-away. With luck, I’ll have my second round of edits done and typed by the time I get comments back from my beta reader.

That means, if two rounds of edits will really be enough, I’ll have the book ready to publish some time around March 4. I’ll take three or four days to format for e-book and print, and publish them. The cover is well underway. The cover photo is chosen and approval to use received, and needed artwork on it is commissioned and will shortly begin.

There’s many a slip, but it could happen on this schedule. I’m starting to get excited.