I’ve been working with a cover designer to take the e-book cover for Doctor Luke’s Assistant and create a print book cover for it. It’s a considerably more complicated process and file. But tonight it’s done, but still subject to any final editing and tweaking thought needed. I’m posting it here to see if my loyal readers have any comments.
China Tour is done. As I posted on my Facebook author page, I finished the first draft of the novel on Sunday March 17. The word count is 71,571.
Now I’m letting it sit for a while. Not too long, however. I think about a week. I’m anxious to edit it and publish it. It’s also possible a plot hole or two may need to be filled. Early in the book I may allude to something later in the book, only to find as I wrote that I never added the thing I intended. Those all have to be fixed. My past experience is that the first round of edits will result in more words, as I think of things I need to clarify, or more references to put in, especially in a book in a foreign culture as this is. I suspect I’ll add close to 1,000 words in this edit.
The second round of edits will be for the purpose of trying to reduce the word count. A first draft will almost always be wordy. Too many modifiers, too much passive voice, too many times of not thinking whether a certain word is needed. I don’t know where this will end up. It’s possible I’ll find whole sentences to come out or paragraphs to drastically trim. Those 1,000 words from the first edit may be offset and more in the second edit.
Edits after that will consist more of proof-reading, and incorporating things that beta readers might find. Not that my past experience with beta readers pointing out minor glitches is all that good. Normally I receive, if I’m lucky, general feedback about publishability, though on well over half of the books I’ve given out to beta readers I heard nothing from them at all, not even if they read the book.
So for a week, or two at the most, I’m not writing new material or even editing. I’m going to use this time to do the following.
So the time will be full, just not on new writing.
I now have about eight posts on this blog in which I’ve mentioned my novel-in-progress, China Tour. I see, however, that I haven’t really said much about how it is I came to write this, when I first thought of it, what I’ve done about that over the years. On the odd chance that this becomes a bestseller, and hoards of fans of it want to know why I wrote it, I’ll go into that here. I don’t know if I’ll fit it all in one post or not.
In January 2003 I finished the first draft of my first novel, Doctor Luke’s Assistant. I wrote that in a creative slow rush, over two or three years. At the time I had no intentions of becoming a writer. The only other creative writing I was doing was some poetry. DLA was simply a story I wanted to tell.
Knowing nothing about how to be published, or how to write a novel, I set the book aside and began studying the market. Some people would say that was backwards. You should first learn how to write a novel, and study the market extensively, before actually writing the novel. Perhaps so, but in my creative rush I did it the other way. As I would learn later, letting a book sit for a time after completing the first draft and getting into the editing is a good thing. Who knew? I just did it.
Since I attend professional and technical conferences for my engineering profession, I figured I’d have to do the same. So I signed up for a regional writers conference in Oklahoma City, and meanwhile began using the internet to study novel writing and the market. By March 2003, at that conference, I still didn’t know much. I learned a lot at the conference. One of the best parts was a one-on-one appointment with Rene Gutteridge. She told me how my dialog was not what was needed, and in those short fifteen minutes gave me some good pointers. These were reinforced in a class I attended the second day of the conference.
From that I began the long editing process of my long novel, while at the same time beginning the querying process to editors. By the end of 2003 I had made three passes through DLA, and had received some rejections. I learned of a national Christian writing conference in Wheaton, Illinois in May, and signed up to attend. Our son living in nearby Chicago made selecting that conference a no brainer.
The biggest piece of eye-opening information I learned at WTP was that publishers don’t want to publish the book of a writer who has a story to tell. They want to publish the book of a writer who wants to have a writing career. Not one book, but many. Not a book and a sequel. Not a trilogy. No, someone who has the chance to have success with the book under consideration and then be able to produce more better books. [Ah, it does my writing heart good to write that in a grammatically and contextually correct way.]
This was a shocker. I think it was on the first day of the conference I heard that. No one would want to publish DLA unless I had other books coming, but I didn’t have other books coming. I just wanted to get DLA published. But I couldn’t under those circumstances. Self-publish it? No, too much negative stigma attached to self-publishing. I was stuck in author no-man’s-land, unless I could think of other books.
So for the rest of the conference, I sat in classes, workshops and sessions, thinking about what other books I could write. Poetry wasn’t an option, though even then I was thinking about something that eventually would become a book. Two novels came to mind. One came immediately: a baseball novel that eventually became In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People“. The other came to me more slowly, over the three days of the conference. That one is what I’m now writing.
So it took from May 2004 to October 2012 for the idea to actually become words on paper. If it was that long, I sure you all won’t mind waiting another day for a second post for me to tell more of the circumstances of the genesis of that idea.
Stay tuned.
I don’t recommend anyone go about their book writing they way I have for the last twelve days. As I reported in a previous post, because I felt no sense of direction of where to go next with my writing. I could write any one of three novels or one non-fiction book. So I decided to write the first chapter in each and see how the work flowed, how it felt to me during the writing, and choose based on the experience.
First up was Headshots, the sequel to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I labored over a Friday-Sunday period, barely getting about 1950 words and the chapter done. I found that picking up the threads of all the people who were involved in the end of FTSP was tedious. In fact, after finishing the chapter I realized I didn’t have all the threads covered: missed one I need to add in.
Next was Preserve The Revelation, the sequel to Doctor Luke’s Assistant. This went better. I did a little work on Augustus ben Adam’s family tree and children before I started the writing, to make sure he could have two sons of the ages I wanted at the time I wanted them. It all worked fine. Then I wrote the chapter in two evenings. Though I had thought much about it over a few years, it still took me in a different direction as I wrote it. The needed scenes for the second chapter ran through my head as I concluded the first, which is a good thing.
Next was China Tour, a sequel to nothing. In fact, it will be a stand-alone novel. This has run through my mind many, many times over the years. I found our trip diary from 1983, read through some of it (the Hong Kong days), and jumped in to the writing. In two evenings I had my 1,500 word first chapter. It went fairly easy; but then I’ve run that chapter over in my mind many times, and had recently explained the book in detail to a colleague.
Then, to this mix I added another volume of Documenting America. This would be a Civil War edition, in recognition that we are now 150 years away from that event, with somewhat heightened interest in the reading public. Unfortunately, I found this heavy going. I enjoyed the research, but the writing went much, much harder than I wanted. This would be the shortest of the four books, and I would certainly enjoy the research, but I think the writing would be most labored.
Based on ease of writing and flow of words, it looks as if China Tour should get the nod to be my next book. Given that, last night I decided to give the second chapter a try, and in two hours knocked out the entire chapter, about 1,050 words. The problem is, this book makes no sense to be the next one. It’s not a sequel to anything, nor is it in a series or will it ever have a sequel. It might not be all that long (I’m thinking 70,000-75,000 words), though for all I know it could run longer.
One of the sequels makes more sense. Those 92 people who bought Doctor Luke’s Assistant, or the 5,000 people who downloaded it for free, might just come looking for something similar. Headshots makes more sense because I most recently wrote FTSP, so the characters are all known commodities and fresh in my mind. I’ve thought though what will happen in considerable detail. The problem? With 3 total sales of FTSP, it’s not like the public is clamoring for this book.
I haven’t committed yet, but it is probable that China Tour will be next. I know at least one of my reader/writer friends who will be happy.
Or lack thereof. As I reported before on this blog, I wrote the first chapter in three different novels, trying to see which inspired me most, and which didn’t inspire me at all, or at least not much. In this way I could perhaps determine which one to work on next, given that none stood out to me before actually writing.
I did that beginning last weekend (that is, Oct 12-14) and during the next week. It was last Wednesday, I think, that I finished the third of the first chapters. Thursday I did little more than re-read and maybe tweak one of them a little. Or, I could be off by a day. It may have been Thursday that I finished the last of the first chapters. One thing I did this time was to start a writing diary for each of these, so I have the exact dates recorded. Alas, the diaries are home and I’m at work as I type this.
Friday I decided to write the first chapter on one more book. I have always intended to write additional volumes of Documenting America. It’s been set aside for more than a year as I wrote other things, but that was always my intent. Given that it is, right now, the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, I thought that would be the best next volume to do.
I had also figured out where to start on that volume: with a speech before the US Senate in 1850 by John C. Calhoun, staunch defender of slavery. After that I would move forward nine or ten years, into the immediate lead up to the war and then the war years themselves.
So Friday I dusted off some old notes, grabbed the right volume of The Annals of America, and read the speech, which is actually a long excerpt in that book. Then I went on-line and found the complete speech, and read most of the parts left out in the Annals. This took all Friday evening, a shortened evening as I had a few other things to do as well as writing.
So Saturday, after my normal Saturday routine (which included cutting down a small, dead tree and cutting it to firewood lengths, as well as a good walk), I went to work on the chapter. And I didn’t get it finished. I worked on it for over three hours, finding concentration impossible. I managed to get together a long excerpt from the book (about 1250 words), which is longer than I used in the first volume. But writing my commentary on it was most difficult. By the end of those three hours, after shifting back and forth from the chapter to rereading parts of the speech to wasting time because I couldn’t concentrate, I think I had only 500 words of commentary done, short of a full chapter.
It didn’t help that I was feeling poorly. I’m not sure if it was something I ate, or having done too much strenuous exercise earlier in the day, but I didn’t feel good all Saturday afternoon and evening. When you body isn’t well, it’s tough to ge the mind in gear.
So where does this leave me? I can safely say that the time is not right for me to work on Documenting America: The Civil War Edition. Of the three novels, the one that seemed to flow best to the page was China Tour, the one that was most difficult was Headshots. Preserve The Revelation flowed fairly well.
What I think I will do is take a few more days to think about it. I have a lot of non-writing things that have piled up over the last few weeks, things like my budget spreadsheet, filing, and some cleaning. It’s those things that a married bachelor takes time to get to when his wife is away helping with the grandkids. Then Thursday I head to Oklahoma City to help said wife with said grandkids, returning next Sunday. So I don’t think I’ll do much writing till then. Although, tonight and tomorrow, if I have a spare hour, I might try my hand at chapter 2 in one of them.
As I reported on Friday, I had hoped to write 5,000 words this weekend just passed. My wife left for Oklahoma City on Friday, leaving me a quiet house and not too much to do. Friday night I arrived home late after eating supper with my mother-in-law. There was still plenty of evening left, and I should have gotten a lot done. Alas, I created folders and files for my three potential new works, and wrote one scene in one of them. Tiredness set it, and I quit for the evening.
Saturday found me in my normal routine. I read in the Bible first thing, then ate a small breakfast, then read some in my current reading book. Then I went outside to do chores, which that day was cutting down a dead tree (only 5″ caliper) and cutting it into firewood length. It was almost too much for this old man, but I got it done. Back inside the house I did some cleaning
That tuckered me out enough that I fell asleep in my reading chair after lunch. I don’t think I slept long: about two touchdowns’ worth in whatever game I had on. Still, I was down in The Dungeon and at my computer by 3:00 p.m. Plenty of time to get a couple of thousand words written.
Alas, I only wrote around 900, taking Headshots up to 1240. I couldn’t concentrate, and kept shelling out to play mindless computer games. I began to write something, wrote ten words in a new scene, and couldn’t think of what to write next. Or, I think more accurately, didn’t want to apply my mind to the scene. So I played games for a half hour, then came back to the scene and wrote it.
Over and over that repeated Saturday, and actually Sunday. By the time I quit at 10:30 p.m. on Sunday I had around 1,430 words written. Well, more than that, I suppose, if you include the two blog posts I wrote for An Arrow Through The Air, my other blog, one which I posted yesterday and one which I scheduled to post tomorrow. That’s another 600 words I guess, bring the total for the three days to 2,000. That’s not bad, but it’s a far cry from the 5,000 I was hoping for.
As I said in a previous post, I’m not sure which novel to work on next, and my plan is to write 1,000 words in each of the three and see which one seems best to me to continue in. I did that in only one, so two to go. Tonight, I’ll be home at a good time. I’ll have to cook supper (stir fry, I think), and do some significant cleaning in the kitchen. That should put me in The Dungeon around 8:00 p.m., giving me time to write the thousand words. I’m thinking of doing so in China Tour, though by the time I get home I may change my mind and go with Preserve The Revelation.
I sure wish I felt some direction in all of this. Possibly the difficulty I had applying myself to Headshots is a form of negative direction. If so, that’s a start.
It’s 6:09 p.m. as I begin to write this, on Saturday afternoon. While there are still hours left in the day, I can look back on what I have done so far and say this was a day of accomplishment.
I should have written down what I did. I’m very sleepy right now, and the list of things done would help me recount them. Maybe I can work backwards. I spent the afternoon working on layout of the print version of Documenting America – the Homeschool Edition. That is done, sitting on my computer. I’ll want to give it one more go, and maybe play with the margins a little. It’s up to 234 pages long, a little longer than I expected. I think I indented some quoted items too much, but can easily play with that and finalize it in less than an hour. I’m still waiting on the cover, so I’m ahead of where I need to be on this one.
Earlier I formatted the same book for Smashwords and uploaded it. It seems I did everything right, because it generated no error messages. It’s already listed for sale on Smashwords, though I have to wait and see how it does with premium catalog distributions.
Before that I re-did some of the interior of the print version of The Candy Store Generation, and uploaded it to CreateSpace. Or maybe I did that last night. Whatever. I received back an error message saying that the cover didn’t work because it didn’t have any bleed around the edges. I contacted the cover designer and she said she’d make that correction this weekend.
Before that, maybe last night, I completed a look through Doctor Luke’s Assistant to see what kind of marks Lynda made on her recent read-through/edit. They aren’t too bad, requiring less than one evening of typing. I may do that in a couple of days, then re-upload it to Kindle and add it to Smashwords. I’ll even look at a print version, but I’m afraid it’s too long to be economical at POD book costs.
I started the day reading in a couple of psalms and praying, then reading 15 pages in a novel I’m reading for pleasure. I’m only 1/3 of the way through it, so I need to be reading more.
For tonight, I have a Sunday School lesson to preview for tomorrow, and will have to fix my own supper with Lynda gone. Then I may do the first typing on the short story I’ve been playing around with on paper. It will be good to be doing the work or a writer for a couple of hours, rather than of a publisher.
Good morning readers. If any of you have time, would you click on over to this thread at Amazon for my book Doctor Luke’s Assistant. This was the one negative review (so far) of the book, a 2-star review. Actually, it wasn’t all that negative. I thought it was a good review.
The reviewer modified his/her original review based on the comment made by another reader that he/she had mixed up the two main characters as to who was a Christian and who wasn’t. The reviewer acknowledged that mistake, and modified the review. I decided to join in and speak to the issues the reviewer raised, agreeing with them as valid criticisms of the book.
I have a thread about my self-publishing journey at the Absolute Write forums. Someone posted this in that forum:
You’ve got some good reviews though, and I’m impressed with the way you handled the one negative review. Very professional and, if I may say so, very Christian. A good example set.
To which a moderator responded with this:
I’ve just read your comments on the review and while it ended with the person who gave your book a negative review agreeing to give your book a second chance, I really don’t think it was a good thing for you to have done.
The impression I got from the exchange was that the reviewer felt a little cowed by your comments, and was embarrassed when you responded. I don’t think you meant any harm by responding in the way that you did: but if I were considering your book and came upon that discussion, your response would put me off buying and reading it.
If you have to explain to a reviewer what your book is about then your book hasn’t done the job you’d hoped. The reviewer hasn’t missed the point; your writing has.
I’m sorry to be so blunt, Norman, but there’s a reason responding to reviews is called The Author’s Big Mistake.
Is responding to reviews “The Author’s Big Mistake”? What do you think? Possibly I need to go back in and say thank you to those who gave good reviews, to show I’m engaging readers, not brow-beating a negative reviewer.
I wish I knew what was right.
As stated in a previous post, it was the first Sunday of January 2003 that I finished the first draft of Doctor Luke’s Assistant. It was around 151,000 words. Although I was completely unknowledgeable of the publishing industry, and of writing in general (except for poetry, which I had been studying), I knew I needed to go through the book. As I had worked through it I added some sub-plot lines, and knew they weren’t accounted for in early chapters.
So I printed the book and began reading it, and typed the edits when I finished a chapter. I learned that sometimes I didn’t write my edits clearly, so as I typed I edited some more. Despite the length of the book, I was able to complete these edits around the first of March 2003. I was satisfied that all plot lines were complete, and any foreshadowing was there. The length after this editing was a little over 155,000 words.
At the same time I had begun studying how to get a book published. Now some people would say this was backwards. Study what makes a good book first, then write it. What can I say? I did it backwards. In the creative rush of getting the book out, I wrote the story that was on my heart, blissfully unaware that it was too long for commercial purposes, in the wrong voice for a rookie writer, and in a dead genre. Three strikes at the start.
I’m usually a fairly quick study on things, and immediately learned that I needed to attend a writers conference. I didn’t know much about what went on at such conferences, but I knew I needed to go. I picked a relatively small, regional, Christian conference in Oklahoma City, a conference billed as for beginners. Perfect. I re-printed the edited manuscript, registered for the conference, took the foster kids to the Children’s Shelter for the weekend (the preferred place to go when foster parents needed a break), and we pointed the minivan westward and drove the four hours.
The two day conference was an eye opener. This was a craft-building and contact-making conference. It didn’t include editors or agents on the faculty, only writers. They said I could sign up for two appointments, so I chose the two writers who taught the first class.
That first class was full of news, mostly bad. I learned the publisher wouldn’t do much to promote my book; I would have to do it. I learned the publisher expected manuscripts to be error free and essentially ready for publishing; I would have to be my own editor or hire one. I learned about query letters, proposals, summaries, etc. Lots of information.
My first appointment was with a veteran writer, an older man who had been a full-time writer for twenty years and who taught the opening class. I gave him my manuscript, which is what I figured I was supposed to do. He looked at the cover for all of two seconds, or maybe three, set it aside and proceeded to lecture me on something. I don’t remember much of what he said.
My second appointment was with Renee Gutteridge, who was early in her writing career, with two novels published and a couple more under contract. She asked what she could do for me. I said this was my first conference, I didn’t really know what these appointments were for, but I had my novel manuscript with me. She took it and read for about five minutes, getting several pages in. She then gave me pointers about dialog, saying I was doing some things wrong, and showing me how to correct it. She spoke about the writing process and editing. It was a good meeting. Must have been, for after more than nine years it has stayed with me.
Overall, the conference was a letdown. I learned that writing the book was not necessarily the hardest part of the publishing process. Just finding a publisher was equally hard if not harder. Somewhere in that conference I learned the difference in the general market (A.B.A.) and the Christian market (C.B.A.) I learned that only one major publisher in the C.B.A. still accepted submittals from un-agented authors. I wrote a query letter, using whatever techniques I had picked up at the conference. I faxed it (allowed, per their web site), and waited.
Not long it turned out. I think it was 48 hours later when the rejection came through, either by return fax or e-mail. My first rejection from a publisher. I was officially a wannabe writer!
Several posts ago I talked about the goals I had in mind for Doctor Luke’s Assistant. I thought I did a good job in that post of explaining what I wanted to accomplish with the book. However, today it received a review on Amazon that spoke to another motivation I had. Hence this post.
The other goal was to make people realize the importance of all four gospels, how they are different, and how it takes all four for us to have a complete picture of Jesus and what was going on around him. I believe the specific passage I read in the gospels that was the impetus to begin this work was the Triumphal Entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem (what the modern church calls Palm Sunday), and within that passage the obtaining of the donkey for Jesus to ride in on. Here’s what the four gospels have to say about that.
Mark: As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ tell him, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.'” They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, some people standing there asked, “What are you doing, untying that colt?” They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go.
Matthew: As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, tell him that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.” …The disciples went and did as Jesus instructed them.
Luke: As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ tell him, ‘The Lord needs it.'” Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” The replied, “The Lord needs it.”
John: Jesus found a young donkey and sat upon it….
The four accounts differ—not enough to affect the believer’s faith, but they do differ. The thing that struck me most about this was Luke’s statement that it was the owners of the colt who confronted the disciples, whereas Mark just says it was some people in the street. I wondered how Luke could possibly have known it was the owners, and decided that he must have been in Israel and found the owners and talked with them. From this DLA sprang forth.
I found similar “discrepancies” in other places. None of them are of faith-shattering significance, but they are all interesting. If you only had one gospel to read, there are some things you wouldn’t know. As I wrote DLA, I could envision a reader who was a serious student of the Bible, reading what Luke said in his imperfect knowledge as he researched this or that passage, saying “That’s not what the Bible says!” I saw that reader taking the Bible, opening to the applicable passage in Mark then Matthew, and learning that what DLA says is correct, and that our knowledge really wasn’t complete without Luke’s and John’s contributions (especially Luke’s due to my subject).
Was I correct to hope for that serious Bible reader to be enlightened by DLA, and to use it as a springboard for their own Bible study? I don’t know, but that became a goal. For the most part I focused on the passages that were different in Luke, to pull the reader in to their own research.
Whether I was successful in this goal will be revealed through the testimony of more readers. One of the reviews posted today on Amazon says I was successful, at least in part. That’s satisfying.