Reading Pt. 3

Like most people, I read a variety of genres and authors. What do I look for in what I read?

I think I’d have to answer that question this way: I want a good story.

I’ve read self-published books with grammar and spelling errors but finished them anyway because the story was excellent. Likewise, I’ve read books by bestselling authors where everything was professional, from the slipjacket to the title page to the font for the text, but stopped partway through because the story was not good. In my opinion, of course.

My favorite author is Louis L’Amour. He wrote a lot of westerns during his lifetime, as well as a few adventure and mystery novel, but it is the stories of the American frontier for which he is best known. Safe to say he’s probably not at the top of the all-time best author list for any literary critics.

Why does he rank so high on my list? Because he told great stories.

His tales didn’t have to be complex with interwoven plot lines and surprise endings. He told stories about people. To me reading one of his books, which I still do, is like sitting around a campfire with someone telling a tale, the old oral tradition of passing along stories. Granted, some of his books had similar plotlines or characters you feel could be the narrator from another of his books, but in some ways that’s actually a good thing. It’s like eating comfort food.

Each of us knows what we like in our choice of reading. I pick what I like and live by the phrase that life is too short to read bad books. I know I’m not giving advice in this blog, but that right there is gold.

Reading Pt. 2

Is there anything worse than when someone tells you about a book they read? Actually, yes, yes there is. When someone insists on telling you about the dream they had last night.

I don’t intend to go into details on every book I’ve ever read. That would be boring and impossible. Let’s keep this high-level.

In summary: I read a lot. And from a wide variety of genres.

I remember reading the Chronicles of Narnia multiple times in late elementary school. In my teen years I read westerns, Star Trek novels, and Lord of the Rings, among others. In college I tended toward longer, epic novels by James Michener and James Clavell, and threw in short stories and classics along the way. After graduation I caught up on all the books I should have read in a literature class. I was a latecomer to Charles Dickens and wonder what I was thinking when I used the Cliff’s Notes on A Tale of Two Cities for a high school book report instead of reading the book itself.

I liked biographies when I was younger, especially of the U.S. Presidents. Now I enjoy bios again and books by Erik Larson with lots of context about significant events and people. I also read history of various kinds, but here’s a strange quirk: I’ve read books about aspects of the Civil War, but I’ve never really dug into it since I fear I’ll become obsessed about the whole thing. I’ve done the same with WWII, although I have to admit I’ve gone a little deeper below the surface.

Now that I read a lot on Kindle Unlimited, I find a lot of books I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. Mostly mystery series or SF, with some thrillers in there, too. I’ve discovered several series of 15+ books that I get into and read through in a month or two. The only downside is less time with books in printed form. As long as I’m reading, though, I don’t consider that too big a problem.

Reading Pt. 1

What do I read?

Before I say anything about that, let me just say I don’t think you can be a writer without being a reader. Revolutionary words, I know, which I’m sure no one has ever said before. Okay, now that we have that out of the way…

My reading habits have changed over the years. I got my first library card when I was five. I already knew how to read at four but the library wouldn’t give me a card at that age because I wasn’t in school yet. My Grandma Brown, who was a schoolteacher, was extremely mad about that, so the family story goes. My source of books for many years was the city library and then school libraries. I remember vividly the library at each of the schools I attended, probably because I spent so much time in each.

When I started mowing lawns, I came up with a little disposable income. Working a part-time job starting in my mid-teens gave me even more. I spent a lot of money on paperback books. And later, I added comic books into the mix.

Book-buying continued and with a steady paycheck in my twenties I had the ability to buy the latest releases in hardback. And I did.

Now I rarely buy the physical coipy of a book, at least compared to those earlier days. I still love the feel of a good book in my hands, but most of what I read right now is on Kindle Unlimited. My wife likes to listen to books, but I prefer to read.

Now you know the medium I use for reading. Back to the original question: what do I read?

Dialogue

It’s tough to write dialogue to make it sound like people actually talking. It’s one of those things I struggle with during the editing process.

When I hired an editor to give me feedback on the First manuscript, one of her suggestions was to review the way the characters spoke. She suggested going to a coffee shop and listening to conversations. As a person who’s been talking for several decades and listening plenty, I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of how human beings converse. But as my editor pointed out much nicer than I would, putting it on paper is a different story.

That’s one of the main reasons I read my books out loud to myself as part of the editing process. Hearing myself speak the words pokes plenty of holes in the way the words are written. If it doesn’t sound right when I say it aloud, I change it so it does.

I also try to keep a few things in mind as I’m writing. People don’t tend to speak in long expositions. In a good conversation there’s a lot of back and forth, prompting each other or inserting comments. When I follow those guidelines I feel more like the characters and their words jump off the page at me.

I think those are good rules but tough for me to follow. When I edit my manuscript I still find long paragraphs of explanation that help advance the story but don’t sound like someone talking. In those moments I tell myself it’s okay; that’s what editing is for.

How I Edit

I’ve spent the week editing Assignment Day. Like I said previously, the manuscript was in better shape than I thought.

That doesn’t mean it’s anywhere near perfect, though. When I finished the story last year, I created a new document where I put a list of bullet-pointed notes about things I needed to fix. Some of them are small, while others require a little more work and even moving sections or scenes around.

One big example was the ending. I wasn’t happy with the how the original climax of the story worked out, feeling I’d missed the mark by quite a bit. I fixed that in the previous edit so that this time around I was able to see what was still not quite right. Hopefully I plugged the holes and it will come off better to the reader.

Here are some examples of other things I listed:

• More examples of how deeply people are addicted to X

• Introduce the Y concept earlier in the story

• A helping out B after being mad at him needs to be better explained

• What about Z?

That last one came to me yesterday when I was out for a run. I realized I hadn’t explained what happened with one of the secondary characters who disappears mysteriously halfway through the book. There’s another plug for how exercise helps my writing.

I still have more bullet points to address and get the manuscript in the shape I want it. I expect a few more days of this before moving on to the next step: reading it out loud to myself.

Scheduling

I’ve been adding posts to this blog every day (except Sundays) for over a month now. I decided earlier this week to change the schedule and only do updates here three times a week on a M-W-F schedule.

Don’t worry, I’m not running out of subject material. My random mind can always come up with something to write about. No, I thought it would be best to spend the off days (T-Th-Sat) on other pursuits, like updating social media and taking care of any business that needs attention. Plus, I don’t want this pursuit to take away too much from my main goal, which is to produce readable books.

Once I finish updating Assignment Day I’ll start editing the draft of Next Time. And after that it’ll be time to write another book, all while hopefully publishing First and the subsequent two.

This change in scheduling is not set in stone, of course. What if I want to post something on a day other than M-W-F? It’s my blog. I can do whatever I want. Gosh.

Editing Update

I finished my first read-through of Assignment Day last Friday. I have to say, it wasn’t in as bad of shape as I thought. Mind you, it’s not perfect and still needs a few changes to some of the struts supporting the frame, but overall better than I expected.

The reason I think it’s in decent shape is because of the ripping and replacing I did last year. I added some elements to make it more interesting and bring in more conflict. I made the stakes higher for the main character. And threw in some additional drama at the climax of the story to give it more resonance.

Is it publishable yet? No. This week I’ll go back to it and add in some paragraphs here and there that tie into the last third of the book. Those add-ins will give some depth to the time period and attitude of society. I’m also thinking about some additional conflict for the mom of the main character, providing another layer to the story.

That last one is the kind of thing I struggle with. Too often our entertainment portrays parents as stupid and selfish, or as bad people, and for the most part in this book I’m trying to frame a normal home life for the narrator. Nevertheless, I think some additional drama could be a good thing.

With a little more work this week it’ll be on the edge of publishable. That means two books ready to publish and one more to edit, which should be done by late this month or early next. It’s amazing to think I’ll have three books ready to go this year. I love it when a plan comes together.

More Running

Continuing the theme in my last post about how creativity and clarity appear sometimes when I’m running, I was thinking of other things I’ve encountered along the running path. Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be another of those blog posts about why everyone should be a runner. I don’t think that’s true, anyway, and I sure don’t want to write that post.

Podcasts. Some people listen to them all the time. I tend to bounce around the dial when it comes to listening to podcasts when I run. I bring this up because over the years I’ve listened to a few writing podcasts. Most of the time when I go out and run I listen to music since it allows my mind to wander, but sometimes I’m just in the mood for a good ol’ podcast.

I don’t subscribe to any but pick out episodes that intrigue me. My sister turned me onto a couple: Six Figure Authors and The Creative Penn Podcast. I’ve learned a little from both of them and I know there’s a lot more out there in the podcast universe. I guess if I was a little more dedicated to podcasts in general I’d check out more, but I also like history podcasts and enjoy those.

Without getting into it too deep, I’ve found a few good ones that talk about the business of writing and advice from other authors. The part that’s encouraging is there are people who might not become bestselling authors but can make a living, or close to it, from the craft. And maybe the best lesson I’ve learned is that I’m not alone. Other people are going and have gone through the same struggles, and that’s woth a listen.

Running

In the previous post I talked about the importance to me of taking off a day every week. In the same vein, I’d like to mention how being a runner has actually helped my writing.

In one of my earlier posts I covered the topic of how ideas about stories pop into my head. I can’t count how many times I’ve had a thought about a story I’m writing while I’m out for a run. It seems like the physical activity, the scenery, and my wandering mind, all combine to inspire clarity. Sometimes I’m not even thinking about my story when it happens.

Let me give an example. My project at the time was Assignment Day and there was a critical plot point I couldn’t resolve. About 2.5 miles into a 4-mile run the solution suddenly became clear. It was like I had to disengage my brain from the writing process to solve the writing problem.

I’ve been running for a few decades now and completed quite a few long runs. Beyond what it can do for your writing, exercise gives the obvious health benefits. I was going to say a healthy writer is a better writer, but plenty of writers proved otherwise, like Edgar Allan Poe for starters.

Running, walking, cycling, rowing - any of the common cardio exercises provide the same opportunity for your brain. I’m not sure anaerobic exercises, like lifting weights, would do the same. There’s just something about getting into the rhythm of an aerobic exercise that allows my brain to disengage. Even so, I’m not so much a running evangelist and instead have told friends and family they need to do whatever exercise they like.

Inspiration and solutions come at unexpected times. I’ve found the best forum for me is outdoors with a pair of running shoes on while I sweat in the hot summer sun.

Sabbath

The idea of a sabbath is that you set aside a day of rest each week. That’s what I do with writing.

Early in my business career I learned how necessary this was. I worked for a software company where part of the year we had extremely tight deadlines. This involved long days of 15+ hours, seven days a week. I rarely get sick and when I do it’s usually because I’ve compromised my immune system with lack of sleep and overwork. As you might guess, I started getting sick on a regular basis during those times of high workload.

I decided I needed to give myself a day off every week. It was exactly what I needed and the frequent illness stopped. My mind was also more productive when working since I gave it a regular day of rest. It was a lesson in learning limits and the value of resting and relaxing.

Fast forward to today. Now that I’ve established a routine for writing, I’ve incorporated the same thought process into my schedule. Every week I take that sabbath and refrain from writing. That’s why you probably won’t see posts from me here on a Sunday since that’s my weekly day of rest.

The day off is a reset, a chance for my mind to wander. I won’t say that I don’t think about writing or the stories I’m working on, but I let those thoughts fly around the inside of my head without landing them. I’m sure there are authors who write seven days a week and have found that works for them. Me? I learned the lesson a long time ago that I need that day of rest, both physically and mentally.

Feb

We’re already through the first month of 2023. Seems like it went by pretty quickly.

Where does the first day of February find me with respect to writing?

For one thing, I’ve kept up entries to this blog on a daily basis, and plan to keep doing so. Also, I wrote a short story set in the world of First. I spoke with a publisher and sent over my manuscript for consideration in the hybrid publishing space. And I’m doing another pass through Assignment Day. I re-entered social media and have accounts now on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. All in all, I’ve managed to stay busy. I have the feeling that I haven’t accomplished anything significant, but the reality is I’ve done a lot of smaller things that become significant in totality.

What’s up for this month? I’d like to nail down the publishing of First, finish the edit of Assignment Day, and begin editing Next Time. That seems like a lot but I think it’s possible. All while making a daily appearance here, of course.

DYI Covers

A few years ago for Christmas I asked for art supplies, like sketch pads, pencils, watercolors, and books on how to be an artist. I spent time learning some basics and had a good time, making some progress in those basic concepts.

Am I an artist? Ha. Not even close. I tell this little story because it relates to covers for my books. I know conceptually what I like and don’t like, but I feel like I should leave the art itself to someone who knows a bit more than my simple sketches.

With my first three books that I self-published I created the covers myself. I’ve mentioned how I did those in a previous post and I won’t re-hash it here. In summary, the covers I made were free and for two of them I used photos I took. Are they great designs? Debatable. They served their purpose and if I re-publish them I will have a pro re-design the covers.

WIth First and Next Time I plan on having someone else do the artwork. I think I’ve made it clear I’m not an artist and I’m not a pro at design or marketing.

Can you judge a book by its cover? No, but you can certainly do things that make people want to pick up your book and give it a try. I want something that pops out at the reader and says, “Pick me up and take a look inside.”

The cover is part of marketing the book. I want to give it the best shot possible and I know myself well enough to realize a professional should do the design work. Just like everything else in this business it will come with a cost, but I feel like it’ll be worth it.

DYI Proofreading

In the previous post I talked a little about do-it-yourself editing. The topic for this post is DYI proofreading.

Much like editing, another set of eyes is essential to finding errors in my writing. In this regard, I’m talking about typos, missing words, punctuation errors, and so on. How many times have you read a book and found an error? It happens and it’s annoying. I expect a professionally published work to be error-free.

With First I did my best to scour out all the errors. Performing a complete self-edit of the manuscript multiple times helps, but it’s no guarantee of catching everything. One thing I did that I think I’ve mentioned before was to read it out loud to myself. Our eyes tend to fill in words or skip over spelling errors, but by reading the whole thing aloud I caught things my lying eyes missed.

Reading out loud also helped beyond proofing. It also helped me with the flow, transitions, as well as the speaking lines and if they sounded natural. The editing I did paid off to a degree since my editor told me it was one of the cleanest manuscripts she’d seen. Without the construction defects, if I can call them that, she was free to concentrate on the story, structure, and everything but typos.

Not that it was perfect. I will still need a professional proofreader before the book is published. When I let my wife read through stories I’m writing, she often asks if I want her to correct any errors as she goes along. I always tell her no since I know either me or a proofreader will find them later. I know I won’t find everything, which is why someone who’s a pro will do the final proofing. That way the readers won’t be distracted and it will actually look like a professionally published story.

DYI Editing

Many aspects of writing are DYI - do it yourself. And others aren’t.

Three big ones that come to mind are editing, proofreading, and cover design.

Let’s start today with editing. As always, more about my own experience and less about giving you advice.

As I mentioned previously, I’d never used a professional editor before First. Mainly because I couldn’t afford it, but also because I wrote my first three books for friends and family and to self-publish. Could they have used an editor? Of course. And if I decide to re-publish them I will look into doing just that.

With First I want to have a bigger audience. My sister, who writes about being a military spouse and the support system therein, connected me with a friend of hers who is an editor. I put the manuscript in as good of shape as possible and sent it over. Within a couple of weeks I received a summary document, comments within the doc, and an hour-long phone conversation to talk through everything.

The editing process gave me confirmation on things that had been uncertain for me and direction on what I needed to add and modify. To be clear, these were things I could have figured out myself, maybe, but I was too close to the story and too personally invested. It was my creation and when you consider you’ve created you consciously and unconsciously protect it when sometimes you need another perspective.

The lesson I learned is that an outside perspective is essential. And it wasn’t as expensive as I thought. Granted, it wasn’t cheap but to me it was money well spent. Would I have figured it all out own my own? No. And that’s a firm no, not a “maybe I would have someday.” And to be even clearer, my spouse and family aren’t good editors, either. For me, another set of experienced eyes was necessary in order to improve my book and I’m glad I did it.

Word Count

Another question that comes up from time to time is this: how many words should I write every day?

Seems to me that question is more along the lines of how much you have to produce in order to be considered a good writer. It’s an attempt to quantify the unquantifiable, to measure the unmeasurable.

I fall into the camp of those who say it doesn’t matter and I write as much as I want or don’t want. My problem is not with setting a target for each day, but with how people will berate themselves if they miss it. If a person sets 2,000 words as their daily target, what happens when they can only get out 850? Trust me, it happens. Or what about sickness? Or vacation? Or the other interruptions of life?

For my part, at the end of a writing session I usually check to see how many words I produced. It’s a curiosity thing. Some days I feel like the keyboard must be about to catch fire because I’m typing so fast, and it’s interesting to me to see how many words I ended up with. On days where the words come out slower, I also find it interesting to check the count. Many times I actually produced more than I thought.

We can all do the math. If you write 2,000 words a day and the goal for a novel is 75,000 words, you’ll have a book in 37 1/2 days of writing. Will you hit that target in the bullseye every single day? Nope. Some days you’ll have more, some less.

It works for me to not have a daily goal. Maybe you want that, and that’s fine. All I can suggest is to go easy on yourself when things don’t go as planned.

Education

I graduated with an accounting degree a few years past (let’s not count) and my favorite class was creative writing.

In my final semester I only needed to complete three classes to graduate, which meant I needed three more credit hours to maintain status as a full-time student or I’d have to start repaying those student loans. Having dabbled for years in writing short stories, I determined to take a creative writing class. I hadn’t darkened the doors of the English department since my freshman year.

It was a drastically different experience than anything I took in the business college. There students sat in rows for lectures, really didn’t talk to each other, and everything felt like a competition. In contrast, the writing class was in a small room with shelves and books, part library, part classroom, with a large table in the middle where all 15 or so of us sat around the perimeter and all took part in discussions.

We studied classic short stories and talked about them. We wrote our own stories and read them out loud to the group. We partnered up with others to critique and offer suggestions on writing. It was all very interactive and different. I remember getting an A in the class and I also recall how surprised everyone was, including the instructor, that someone from the business school could write. It was fun and I’m glad I had the chance to take it.

Did I have to take that class in order to write? Of course not. Writing carries no educational requirements. In fact, I’d bet most of the successful writers in history didn’t have a degree in writing. Did the class help? Yes, I have great memories of it although I couldn’t tell you anything specific I learned. It was more of an education in how to interact with other writers and learning that people do things differently, which is just fine. By that, I mean that people respond differently to the same prompts, like being given a topic and having to write a five-page story about it. Learning there are no guardrails in writing was probably the best education I got on my way to that accounting degree.

What You Know

Have you ever heard the phrase, “write what you know?”

It’s another piece of writing advice that bubbles up from time to time. Maybe it applies better to nonfiction, but I don’t see its relevance so much in the world of fiction. Taken to the absurdist position, if we only write what we know then our stories are less fiction and more personal experience.

I take the saying more as writing about things you’re familiar with. For example, it would be tough for me to write a story set in Siberia. I’ve never been there, although that’s not a prerequisite, and I haven’t done any research about it other than hearing it’s cold and desolate. Could I write a believable story about Siberia? Probably, but I’d have to know more about it. Writing a story set in the desert Southwest of the United States? No problem, lived there a quarter of a century. It’s what I know.

Imagination is what compels us to write fiction. Maybe the question is more along the lines of writing convincingly. Can I write a story set in Siberia and convince you you’re there? Not today. If I did try it my descriptions would lack the types of details readers need to immerse themselves in the overall story. Can I write a story that makes you feel cold? Sure. Can I write a story where you feel the frosty bite of a brutal, unrelenting Russian winter and how it’s different from a New England blizzard?

Should we only write about what we know? Sounds extremely limiting to me. Should we writing convincingly about our characters, settings, and scenes? Absolutely.

Outlines

Another topic that comes up about writing is outlines. Yes or no?

Once again, no advice here, just my experience.

I’ve read about authors who meticulously outline their entire books. It’s hard for me to imagine that much level of detail before I even begin writing because to me it leaves little to chance in the world of storytelling. I think it was John Irving (I’m too lazy to go find a citation) who said he never started writing a book without having the last sentence written first. Then he would work on the craft of writing as he laid down the story. He’s a true wizard when it comes to crafting sentences that put you under their spell and clearly his approach works. For him.

I’ve tried a couple of methods with the books I’ve written. I start with a general idea of the opening scene and the conclusion. Everything in between is up in the air. I tend to follow the three-act method of storytelling and so I will take my notebook and map out the major events that need to take place in each act. In some cases I’ve mapped out what happens in each chapter. I do this for a couple of reasons.

One is that I want to capture an ebb and flow of action and emotion. Another is to keep myself pointed toward the end goal. A further reason is because I often have major events in mind for the story and I don’t want to forget them. Plus, they need to be paced correctly in the course of the book. It’s a rough outline, I suppose, but I often find myself deviating from it. Sometimes substantially.

For me, a rough outline like that is a guide, not a hard and fast way I have to tell the story. For some, it might be the opposite. The great thing about writing is that there’s no right way and no wrong way. You can experiment and find what works for you.

And if someone tell you you’re doing it wrong? Ignore them.

Ideas

Based on my limited experience, it seems like ideas for stories are not scarce. But non-writers ask the question, including my own mom: where do you get your ideas for stories?

Well, as I mentioned in a previous post, the idea for Next Time popped into my head in the wee morning hours a couple of day after a two-week stay in Ireland. I can’t explain how that happened - the idea popping into my head, I mean. I know how the Ireland trip happened, thank you very much.

The germ for First rolled around in my head for quite a while. I imagined what it would be like to be the first person to travel to another star system and how it would feel to be utterly alone. The trigger that made me write it out was an article I read about space travel. I don’t remember it all and can’t find it now, but the gist was that maybe if we could control the time component we could easily manipulate the other variables involved in travel. Or at least that’s what I got from it.

Going back further, the idea for Sunset and the other two books in the series came more from a philosphical stray thought. It was the time of the anti-hero in culture (think The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, etc.). The idea of a person who performed acts that were morally wrong but remained sympathetic to the audience intrigued me. What could i have a character do that hadn’t been done before and keep the reader from throwing the book against a wall? Murder, cooking meth, stalking serial killers…those had been done.

So I went with kidnapping. We know it exists and there’s a hidden world we rarely glimpse where kidnappings take place but we choose to ignore the stories. What if my main character was a kidnapper? How would he get into such a line of work, if you want to call it that? And how would the reader be able to identify with him and actually want to read his story?

I think I found a good solution and one that drove the very first scene in the book.

World-Building

After much thought, my next move will be to edit Assignment Day.

It’s been almost four months since I touched the book, and as I was thinking about it this past week I realized I need to spend some time in world-building. I have a good framework and did a little bit of world-building early on, but I need to make it more well-defined.

Assignment Day is set in 2080. It’s a world similar to ours in many ways, but in the world of the novel everyone is addicted to virtual reality. What I need to do is make it believable and yet different from other books set in a similar future. I don’t want someone to read it and think it’s the same world as Ready Player One, for example. I need to play up the setting and environment better than what is in the draft.

What does that mean? It means if I take the time to really line out how the world in 2080 works in my book, then when I work on editing it I can add in bits and pieces as I go along. Not everything will make it from my world-building notes into the book, but the background is useful, regardless. There’s a difference between intentional ambiguity so people can interpret something how they want versus ambiguity because I was lazy and left the reader unclear on the characters and the world of the story.

That’s my plan starting Monday. I estimate most, if not all, of next week will be spent in this exercise. I will also go back to my character sketches and revise them based on what I come up with during the world-building. And then once all that is complete, I can edit my draft with confidence and clear direction.