Conventioning

I spent most of the day yesterday at the Southern Authors Expo at my local library. It was a relatively small show--around 65 authors--hosted on the first floor of the library.

This was my first show. Or, at least, the first show I actually physically went to as a vendor. I co-ran my spouse's table at a few shows, and Evin's publisher took copies of my book with them to Indies in Indy last month (and will have copies at another show in October--more details on that when I have them), but I've never manned a table for my own work. Until yesterday.

 

My table. Little, but so pretty.

 

Getting to go to an author event for the first time as an author rather than a reader was an exciting thing. Meeting potential readers face-to-face is invigorating. I wouldn't call myself a great salesperson, but I do feel like I do a little better pitching my work in person than the blurbs on websites do. I had a few chances to talk up my book, and the response I got to these pitches were positive. 

And I got to meet other local authors. This is great firstly because writing can sometimes feel deeply lonely. The reminder that there are other people that share some of my experiences helps keep me grounded. It makes me feel less alone in the world while I work--not just on the writing itself, but also on developing a platform and trying to get my work out there. The second benefit of meeting other authors is getting to pick their brains for resources. I got the names of a few new publishers and agents and guilds and writing groups that I'm going to check out. I might have come across these resources on my own--I spend a pretty substantial amount of time researching the publishing industry--but this saves me a little time and gives me a baseline expectation for groups before I go in.

There are a lot of benefits to shows like this, but the drawbacks are worth noting. 

This particular event didn't have fantastic attendance. There were plenty of authors, but there our tables didn't get much in the way of foot traffic. Some of this is the result of the event being relatively new. It takes a while for an event to build an audience. I didn't participate in the event last year, but, from what some of the other authors told me, there had been a few improvements in the way the event was run between last year and this year. The addition of author panels was one of the positive steps made, and the advertising was somewhat improved. That's promising, and enough to encourage me to come back, but some of the folks that showed up the first two years might have less patience. 

The relatively low attendance also meant that several authors didn't sell anything. I did relatively well--better than some of my neighbors--but I didn't make back what I spent on the table, the books, and the other odds and ends I picked up for my table. I expected this. I knew about how well most author attendees did last year, so I expected to lose out. I imagine some of the others did, too, but it does sting to not sell much--or at all.

If I view the event from a money-making standpoint, I couldn't really call it a success. But, if I view it as a way to get some facetime with readers, to get my name out, to network with other authors, it was one of the best bits of marketing I've done.

Events, Workshops, and Appearances

This summer has been hectic.

Though things have slowed down in terms of my day job, I've still been doing work. The summer class I'm teaching lasts until the end of the month. I've had the worst month in terms of migraines that I've ever had. I've had two pieces due on deadlines (both are out the door now, thank goodness). And I've been going back to Project 2016 trying to get it in the best possible shape (I've about decided to call in a professional editor to take a look at it--I think I've hit the end of what I know to do to clean it up).

So I've had a fair amount on my plate. But, as I've mentioned before, my ability to use moderation in the creation of my schedule isn't the best. I'm trying to take breaks and get some rest, but I promised myself that 2017 would be the year that I did everything in my power to further my writing. Part of this is wrapped up in working on the writing itself. Part of it is working on promoting the work that I've already got out there. In the coming months, I've got a few workshops, events, and appearances on the schedule. If you want to find my work, check out a workshop, or meet me, check the schedule below.

JULY

July 29--Indies in Indy, Carmel, IN

I won't personally be attending the Indies in Indy event, but Evin's publisher, Foundations, LLC, will have a table. Copies of Evin will be available for purchase. Be sure to say hi to Steve and Laura and to check out the other Foundations books at the event.

AUGUST

August 12-- LitPow Author-Prenuer Workshop, Huntsville, AL

I wrote about going to the Alabama Writers Workshop back in February. That event was an excellent experience, and I noted at the end of my post about it that it was a shame I wouldn't be able to do many similar events.

And then one got scheduled right next door.

Where this workshop differs somewhat from the ALAWW is that there's more time given to platform building and getting a career started. This and the opportunity to get feedback on my first page and to hear what agents are looking for has got me pretty excited for the workshop.

August 19-- Southern Authors Expo, Huntsville, AL Library Main Branch

This day-long event is a combination of panels by authors dealing with different aspects of writing and publishing and a writers market. I'll be there all day with copies of Evin for sale. I'll also be signing copies, so if you're local and have already bought one, bring it by. If the event works the way it has in the past, there will also be door prizes and chances to get your own writing reviewed and critiqued by the participants.

I'll be posting more events as they're scheduled. If you want to keep up with what I'm doing, you can follow me on Twitter or Facebook or check out my website.

Interviews

It's been a busy few weeks. I've been pounding the pavement, as it were, trying to get the word out about Evin  and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." In case you've missed it, here are the interviews I've done in the past few weeks.

I hope you enjoy them!

First, a video interview with Lorana Hoopes on her show Lorana Writes the World. (Watch for my cat, Stormageddon, to make an appearance.)

I also had the chance to do a live interview on the ArtistFirst Radio Network program Authors First on June 20. The live broadcast has come and gone, but the show has been archived here. Sit back and listen to me chat about myself, my books, and the wonder that is the Wishbone television series.

The Who and the What

There are a million concerns that come up when I'm writing a story--pacing, development, wording, and on and on. But there are two that come first, two concerns that are the crux of the process.

Character and plot. Or, the who and the what.

Who is my story about? What happens in the story? These are the first two questions I have to find answers to when I start work on a new project. And they seem obvious. I can't tell a story unless I know whose story I'm telling. And if I don't know what happens, then I just have characters hanging around with no particular aim.

These are basic, bare-bones questions. The should be simple.

But I have a hard time answering both. I can come up with characters that live and breathe. Or I can come up with a fully-articulated plot. But I run into problems when I try to do both.

With Evin, the plot came first. I had the story worked out from beginning to end. I knew all the moving pieces of what would happen. But the characters were vague--ideas more than living participants for the story. They sounded the same. None of them had specific motivations beyond "do what the plot requires we do." I didn't have moments where I wondered what the point of a particular chapter was. I knew what beats had to be hit, what set pieces there had to be in each segment. I knew what scenes I needed.

But the human element was missing.

I did something around 5 drafts of Evin before it got to where it is now. There was a lot that was improved on between the first draft and the published draft. The voices are more specific. The motivations are somewhat clearer. But when I look at the book, I'm not satisfied.

With Project 2016, the situation was largely opposite. The characters came first, a team of them with specific backgrounds and desires and voices. I knew who these people were, and I knew them completely--and almost immediately. Not just how to make them sound different on the page, but what made them tick. Why would this person say these words? Why is this one the one that has to take the risk or do the task? Why does this one react so strongly to a particular situation? I could drop these characters into almost any scenario and know how they would interpret it. These characters aren't vague--they live and breathe.

But I was never completely sure what to do with them.

Evin's plot never changed during the process. The journey, the goal--I knew what they were from the beginning.

With Project 2016, I came up with a potential conflict and explored. I got a skeletal plot. I let it sit for years before coming back and refining it--fleshing out the conflict and figuring out some scenes that the characters' personalities would dictate. And then it wasn't enough.

I want people to connect with these characters--and to get that to happen, I figured out that the plot couldn't start where I thought it did. And that it might need to continue after I thought it would end.

I can't speak to which process is the better one for me in the long run. I personally feel more connected to Project 2016 than to Evin, but that could just be because it's the current project. Or I could be happier with it because I've learned new tools and tricks since I did the work on Evin, and it might have less to do with the process than with the level of experience. All I do know is that I have to get to a point where the what and the who are both fully formed. I can't rely solely on an interesting plot or solely on complete characters to compel a reader to stick with me.

For my readers who are writers, where do you start with a new project? What parts come first? How do you make sure you're giving each piece the best you can offer?

Wrap It Up

Well, 2016 was certainly a hell of a ride.

In a lot of ways, this past year was not a great one for me. I lost a great many idols and inspirations. I saw the appalling reversal of trends that I thought couldn't help but continue to march forward. I went through a semester of teaching that turned out to be more complicated and difficult than the last few have been. I had to find ways to cope with anxiety and depression without the aid of the healthcare system--which frequently meant not coping very well at all.

Let's just say it's been a rough one.

But, in spite of all of that, 2016 might have been the best year ever as far as my writing is concerned.

I don't say that to romanticize suffering in the way that some might. Sure, struggle can sometimes lead to the creation of great art, but it's really hard to create art when you're so deep in a pit of depression that a managing to get up and get a shower feels like a feat worthy of an Olympic medal. This glamorized image of the suffering artist is a problem in a lot of ways, and I could go one about the issues for hours, but that's for another day. What I mean is that, despite (despite and not because of) the difficulties I faced this year, I still managed to do.

I've mentioned before that one of my (many) stumbling blocks with writing has been momentum. I'll come up with an idea, steam ahead for a while, and then lose interest or stop making the time to work. Projects not only got moved to the back burner, but taken off of the stove all together and shoved into the back corner of the freezer.

That didn't happen this year. I committed to setting aside time for my writing work. I got shit done, and it felt pretty glorious. When I look at the list of achievements for 2016, it's actually pretty impressive.

1. I finished the polishes on Evin
2. Evin got published--my first ever published novel
3. Had semi-regular writing group meetings
4. I re-outlined and redrafted Delphinus
5. And outlined and drafted its prequel
6. I finished two rounds of revisions on Delphinus
7. According to my Magic Spreadsheet count, I wrote almost 150,000 words
8. I managed to keep up with this blog for most of the year (and I'm notoriously bad about abandoning blogs)

And most of that was in the back half of the year. 

So, yeah. As far as writing goes, 2016 was one for the books. But I don't want to rest on my laurels. I don't want this to be the one productive year that I get.

I've been thinking about what I want for my writing career, such as it is, and what I can do in 2017 to keep the momentum and to get closer to my dreams for my writing.

I'm compiling a list of goals for this year. I'm sure the list will change as the months go by, but I wanted to share some of what I plan to do to keep myself on track this year. Maybe these goals are relevant to you, too.

1. Finish the next round of edits for Delphinus and send it back out to test readers
2. Attend at least one writing conference and try to do some in-person pitching
3. Continue writing group meetings and participate in more local writer events
4. Do author events--a couple of signings are already in the works, but I want to make it to at least one convention in 2017 as well
5. Send out more queries in batches of four. Review the manuscript and responses after rejections to determine if there are patterns in how agents/editors are responding
6. Do round one revisions on the prequel and get it sent to beta readers
7. Outline trilogy's third book
8. Draft trilogy's third book
9. Finish drafts of two short stories
10. Continue regular blog posts

I've got my work cut out for me this year, but I've also already made progress on a few of these goals.

As difficult as 2016 was, it was the turning of a new leaf for me as far as my writing goes. I have high hopes for 2017.

In the meantime, I have work to do.

Happy New Year.
 

Evin Trailer

The blog remains on hiatus until the end of NaNoWriMo (I'm about 45,000 words into my 80,000 word project), but I wanted to go ahead and share the new Evin book trailer. Check it out below.

Remember, you can buy a copy of Evin through the following links:
Amazon US: http://amzn.to/2bH2pNC
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Evin-S-Cr…/…/B01JUT8H56/ref=sr_1_1…
Amazon CA: https://www.amazon.ca/Evin-S-Crowd…/…/B01JUT8H56/ref=sr_1_1…
Amazon AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/Evin-S-Crowder-ebook/…/ref=sr_1_1…
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/662274 
Barnes and Noble (Paperback and Hardcover only): http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/evin-as-crowder/1124279713…
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31387704-evin

Building

I generally don't feel like I'm very good at world building. Which is awful, because I seem to always want to write things that require a lot of world building.

Evin required me to build the forest and the worlds connected to it. The forest and the places the characters came from each had to have their own distinct ambience and identity. It couldn't feel like I was sending the characters to the same places over and over. I hope it didn't feel that way.

Project 2016 also demanded some world building--more, in fact, than Evin did.

See, Project 2016 is a set in the far future. And in space.

I love Firefly, but I will never understand why you go through the trouble of telling a story in space only to not have any aliens. Seriously. None? None at all?

There are several ways that this gets complicated. First, though my two POV characters are both human, they don't have lives like humans living today. Time, technology, and interaction with other sapient species have changed social arrangements and day-to-day activities for humans. It's up to me to determine how much has changed--and how much has stayed the same. I have to determine what technology exists, how it's used, and who has access to it. Beyond that, I have to figure out who came up with the technology first, because that's going to play a role in things like where the money is, who gets to make governmental decisions, and even what language people will speak--not just my human characters, but the other characters they come into contact with.

I also have to figure out my nonhuman characters--to build their species from the ground up. What about them is similar to humans and what's different? Why did these particular differences develop? How might these physical differences shape differences in culture (for instance, one of my species has a very refined sense of hearing--so they don't listen to music with brass or wind instruments because they can easily hear the spit moving through the instruments and it sounds gross). Does each species tend towards diplomacy or warfare? I also have to figure out how each species first came into contact with the others--peaceful first encounters might mean alliances, where violent once might mean long-standing grudges, and either is going to shape how members of different species interact.

And all of this is aside from the building required for any book--the characters' personal histories and their specific experiences with the framework of the world they live in and other characters associated with different groups, whether they're technologically savvy, if they've ever even seen a person from a different species.

There are so many moving parts that I'm not always confident that I'm doing a good job keeping track of them. Evin seemed like it was easier--though that could honestly have been more of a factor of my not knowing as well what I was doing.

For Project 2016, I built a universe bible. For me, it's a word document where I've listed the rules of the story's world--the history, notable people, some of the laws and political set ups. It has a brief description of each of the species and how they relate to the others, a history of how some of the important organizations and groups were formed and what the popular opinion of them seems to be.

I think I've been pretty thorough this time--more than I have been in the past. But I still worry that I've missed something. Part of the problem is that I don't usually know what aspect of the world I don't have pinned down until I need it in the story. And then I end up having to go back and put it in (and usually adjust everything around it so that things still make sense).

At this point, I know the world of Project 2016 well, and, as I said in the last post, I'm pretty fond of it.

Putting together the world of Project 2016 has been a lot of work, and I'm not sure how effectively I did it, though I can safely say I'm confident that I did it better this time than last time. And there's a lot of information that I have that's didn't make it into the project (though some of it may be in future projects, if I revisit this universe).

World building is the best and worst part of the process--there's so much potential for the story when you start putting the world together, but there's also so much that can go wrong or get out of hand (at what point does world building stop helping the story and start getting in the way?).

I'm in the early stages of world building for the next project, though I haven't completely left Project 2016. I still don't think I'm great at it, but I do think I'm getting better.

That's the best part of writing, I think. It's always hard, and sometimes I hate it, but I keep getting better--and I do love that.

Evin

Evin is out in the world! Here's where to find your copy.

 

Eva has never seen the Forest of Evin, but her fate and the fate of the Forest may be intertwined. Sinister forces seek to pull the Forest apart, and Eva may be the only one who can save it. Eva must travel between worlds to keep the Forest together—but the Forest of Evin thrums with power and the force tearing it apart may not be the only danger.


Amazon US: http://amzn.to/2bH2pNC
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Evin-S-Cr…/…/B01JUT8H56/ref=sr_1_1…
Amazon CA: https://www.amazon.ca/Evin-S-Crowd…/…/B01JUT8H56/ref=sr_1_1…
Amazon AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/Evin-S-Crowder-ebook/…/ref=sr_1_1…
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/662274 
Barnes and Noble (Paperback and Hardcover only): http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/evin-as-crowder/1124279713…
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31387704-evin

Be sure to leave a review of the book when you finish with it.

Happy reading!

Promoting

I'm in that weird writing limbo again. Drafts of Project 2016 are out with readers, outlines for the next projects are still nebulous, and Evin is out in the world, so there's not a lot of heavy work going on as far as novels go--which is just as well. My day job has started back up, so I can use a little bit of a break. I'm still writing every day (barring a couple days where migraines made me useless), but it's low-impact stuff.

My focus lately, since I'm not at a point where I can bury myself in working on a novel, has been on trying to ensure Evin's success. I mentioned last week how readers can help with their reviews. (A couple of you have left reviews that have been very kind, and thank you for that.) And while word of mouth from readers and reviews on Amazon and the like are a huge boon, I know that I can't rely on you guys to do all of the work.

I have to figure out how to promote my book. But here's the thing:

 

I've never been really great at self-promotion. Generally, I prefer to let my work speak for itself. In other areas of my life, this works just fine. Need to know if I can act? Let me do an audition and you can see for yourself. Want to see if I can organize your paperwork? Give me a sample set to deal with. But Evin can't speak for me if people don't read it. I have to do the legwork and get it in front of people's faces.

It's a strange balance, trying to promote my work without being pushy or obnoxious or self-important. And I'm frankly not very good at managing that balance. I've sent out emails to people with whom I have pretty tenuous connections suggesting that they pick up my book or order it for their library. My Twitter, which has typically been the place where I talk about pop culture and politics has been doing double duty as an advertising account (again, my apologies to people who followed me for things like live-tweeting episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or observations about comics).

There have been a lot of emails and requests that have gone without response--which is not really out of line with what I expected. People are busy and may not remember the kid that used to hang out in the library ten years ago.

But there has been some forward movement. A couple of my emails have been answered, and there's the potential for some coverage for Evin and some events for me (as always, watch the Facebook page for updates on that). And Foundations has promotions assistants that are helping to get the word out.

So much of this publishing journey has been me sailing through strange waters. Through most of it, I've managed to find enough familiarity to not feel too adrift. With promotions though, I'm glad to have the extra guidance, because I am well and truly out of my depth.

Reviews

And so it's happened. My book is out in the world.

There's a part of me--the part prone to flights of fancy, the part that is most useful for writing and that gets SO IN THE WAY for every other aspect of my life--that expected immediate change in my life. Sales through the roof. Frenzied demands for my next book. The ability to, if not walk away from my day job, to at least be able to arrange my schedule comfortably.

But I'm a first time author published through a new and small (though growing, certainly) publishing company. The realistic part of me (the one that is, thankfully, louder most of the time) knew--still knows-- that I'm probably not going to be breaking any sales records. This isn't the book that changes my life, that lets me shed all identities but author.

The dream would have been nice, but I'm about where I expected to be. I'm selling copies mostly to people I know, though there have been a few people outside that circle that have picked up my book, and I've got a couple of book festivals lined up. I won't make the best sellers list, but maybe, when I go to agents and publishers with Project 2016 (which should be within the next month or two, if you were wondering), I'll have a modestly successful book behind me.

But even hitting that benchmark is going to take work.

I don't normally do calls to action on the blog. It's more where I work through my anxieties in the hope that maybe talking about my experiences will help me figure out how to deal with them--or tell someone else feeling similar things that they aren't alone. But frankly, I need some help. And if you've stuck around this blog long enough to be reading this, you might be interested in helping.

The actual point at which a book published by a small press is said to have had good sales varies--it depends on the press, on the genre, on the expectations at signing. I've seen numbers ranging from 100 to 1000 to 3000. Whatever the number is, it's pretty clear that I won't hit it if I'm just selling copies to friends and family. The book has to get in front of other people. This is where you come in.

Word of mouth is great. Tell whoever you want about my book! I have very little in the way of an advertising budget, so other people recommending  Evin is great.

The best thing that you can do as far as getting Evin out there is to review it. On Amazon, on Barnes & Noble, on Goodreads--wherever you have the option.

The reason is simple: the more reviews a book has, the more people see it. On Amazon, for instance, a book has to hit about 50 reviews before it starts showing up in the "people also viewed" or "people also bought" lists. If Evin makes it to those lists, the circle of people who might read it grows.

Reviews don't have to be sonnets or deep analyses of the work. A simple "I liked it" does just as much as a five-paragraph essay.

If you read the book, if you liked the book, do me a favor and leave a review. Getting to that 50 mark will open up so many more possibilities.

And if you wanted to know where Evin is now

 

Well, we've got a ways to go.

Thanks to everyone who's bought a copy of Evin so far. If you haven't snagged one yet, links to places to order it are in a list on the side of this page. Also, if you haven't already, check out my author page on Facebook. Not only will you be the first to know when new blog posts go up, you'll also get an early glimpse at some of the things I'm working on and news about up coming events (and there are a couple in the next two months).

Anticipation

Evin comes out tomorrow.

And it all seems kind of unreal, even though the announcement is up on the publisher's website.

But I still don't quite believe it.

I'm essentially a ball of nerves doused in coffee even under the best of circumstances, so the prospect of this thing that I've created going out into the world has me feeling--well, feeling. Lots of things.

I'm excited. I've dreamed of being a "real author" ever since I figured out what an author was. This is the fruition of years of work learning the craft, piecing together the narrative, writing and rewriting. And this thing that I threw so much time and effort into has seen success. People who don't know me, who have never met me, have put their confidence in my work and are trying to get it in front of other people's eyes. I can't say that I'm not looking forward to adding published author to my list of accomplishments.

I'm also terrified. There is a part of me that is convinced that this is all a mistake. This part of me has been waiting for an email saying "Sorry, this was all a mistake" since I signed the contract back in May, waiting for something to indicate a loss of confidence from the publisher. And all of those nerves are nothing compared to the nightmare scenarios I've been imagining about readers.

It all comes back to one question I've been asking myself over and over: what if my book actually sucks?

I'm pretty proud of Evin. It's not perfect--no book is. It's not the best thing I could write now, but it was at the time that I wrote it. The handful of people that have already read it have reacted positively. And the publisher accepted it without asking for story changes.

But my imposter syndrome tends to shove all of that out of my mind. I convince myself that the book is going to fail. That I'll never be able to get anything I write taken seriously again.

There's no way for me to predict what will happen after Evin hits the figurative shelves tomorrow. It probably won't be as bad as I fear. It probably won't be as good as I hope. That I'll be a nervous mess through today and tomorrow is really the only thing that's guaranteed. But, if I make it through--and, if I'm being honest, I expect I will--then I plan to keep at it.

My first book comes out tomorrow. With any luck, it won't be my last.

Evin Cover Reveal

I'm pleased to announce that my novel, Evin is set to be published by Foundations, LLC in August!

Check here and my author Facebook page for updates.

Alpha Beta

(Coincidentally, I think the title of this post was also the name of a beta fish that my sister/her roommate had in college.

Alpha the Beta. Get it? The jokes are strong with my family.)

I mentioned on the Facebook page this week that I've been working on the alpha draft of a new project (which, until I finalize a title for it, I'm just going to refer to as "Project 2016").  This is sort of a lie.

I started working on the actual alpha draft of this project--the actual first full write up of this story--a little over ten years ago.

Project 2016 is, technically, the first book I ever wrote.

And I'm starting it over.

Let me explain.

It's not like I've been working on this project nonstop for ten years. I mentioned in a previous post that my workflow has, until recently, been pretty spotty. This work went untouched for almost my entire time in college.

I also wrote what will be my debut novel, Evin, during this time. (More updates on that as I'm given the go ahead to make them.)

Since much of the work on this project has been stop and start, and since so much of the early work was done so long ago--at a time when I was an awful writer as opposed to a mediocre one--I have essentially had to restart the entire thing.



On the upside, this means that my outlines are super thorough. I've already written the whole thing and sort of know what aspects didn't work and need to be adjusted.

On the downside, it means that my expectations are higher.

The alpha draft of Evin was written in a flurry. Most of the first draft was written during NaNoWriMo (NationalNovel Writing Month) 2012. I’d written about 10,000 words and had a rough outline, but I was mostly just writing. I knew that parts of the draft weren’t good and would have to be reworked if I was ever to try to shop the book around. It was an experiment, and if the alpha draft sucked, that was just part of it.

But I don’t have that luxury with Project 2016. I’ve written the alpha draft. This should be the revision—the draft where it starts to be good, where it begins to resemble the “final” product (I’m among those that think that a creative work is never really complete—it’s just left alone).

The thing with the actual alpha draft, the one that I started ten years ago, is that it’s bad. Like, really bad.

There’s a specific type of cognitive bias that’s called the Dunning-Krugereffect. The crux of this effect is basically that people who have more skill or know more about a certain thing tend to underestimate their competence, while people with less skill or knowledge tend to overestimate their competence.

I was seventeen ten years ago. I, objectively, knew very little about writing. I thought I was one of the best writers in the world.

In the last couple of years, I’ve been trying to learn more about the craft. I’ve realized how little I actually knew—how little I still know—about the art of storytelling. I recognize how far I have to go.

The true alpha draft of Project 2016 is a mess. The story is vague. The characters, while charming, aren’t fleshed out. My voice in undeveloped, and I have no understanding of how to manage point of view.

The skeleton of the book is there—but it is absolutely just the bare bones.

Revisions are always a bit of a nightmare. Having to rework, add in, or cut set pieces and character moments can suck. Refining the connective tissue takes time and requires that the writer be brutal with their own work.

Having a decent starting point makes a huge difference. The alpha draft of Evin wasn’t great, but it was more than just bones (my writing group partner referred to it as a “skinny bean pole”—which sounds way more adorable than the draft felt). The revising process was just refining—not reconstructing.

So I’m having to alter the way that I’m looking at Project 2016. I can’t look at what’s technically a beta draft as a beta draft. It’s a second alpha. An alpha-beta.

The work is still slow going, but adjusting my approach to the project has freed me up a little. I’ve separated myself from second-draft expectations, and the work is a little bit easier.

With any luck, it’ll be enough for me to finally get this story working the way I want it. After ten years, I’d love to see that.