Forgot to mention, joined twitter the other day… @mark_fassett (original, yeah?)
Category Archives: Writing
Finished first revision of Shattered
It’s about time. Today, I finished the first revision of Shattered. It still needs at least one more pass, but I’m going to take a break from it through the weekend.
You may have noticed (if you were watching the progress bar) that the first third of the book took significantly longer to work through than the last two thirds combined. This is due, in part, to how the book was written in the first place.
I started the book as a NaNoWriMo project back in 2009, and wrote the first four and a half chapters. Then the book sat, for various reasons, until August of 2010, at which point, I blasted through the rest of the book in about 45 days.
Between those two dates, some of the details and motivations changed. The book didn’t go in quite the same direction I’d originally intended, and there were things in the last two thirds that really didn’t flow from the first third. The first chapter was pretty much awful and I rewrote it completely. Other parts of the first five also got large rewrites. The first third required a lot of work.
The last two thirds were much better and flowed together quite nicely. They didn’t need many structural changes.
On Monday, I’m going to start working through it, looking for all the little mistakes and stilted dialog and inconsistencies that I’m sure still exist. I hope to have that done by the end of the month.
It’s a neat story, I think, and I’m excited to show it off.
My Publishing Choice For Shattered
I want to spew my opinions on publishing into the ether, but I really hate doing that sort of thing without having some sort of personal experience. I am going to ignore the distaste this time, because I want to explain a decision I’ve recently made.
A Wizard’s Work: Shattered is the first novel that I will release to the world. It’s not the first novel I’ve written, but it’s the first piece of work I feel comfortable showing large numbers (well, larger than my circle of friends) of people.
If this were five years ago, or perhaps even two years ago, I would be sending it to publishers. Would it get rejected? Who knows. Probably. Every author takes their lumps initially. However, this isn’t five years ago, nor is it two years ago. It’s now, and the rules appear to have changed.
If I were to submit AWW:Shattered to publishers, the minimum time frame for it to be published would likely be eighteen months. This assumes that the first publisher read it loved it and accepted it within the first week. I suspect, however, the book would be out on submission for a year or more before finding a publisher, and then it would be another eighteen months after that before I could find it in my local book shop. Two and a half years before it starts making back the advance.
And what kind of advance would I get? Typical advances for first novels appear to be no more than $10,000 with an average of $5,000.
$5,000 spread across 30 months is $166 a month, and the chances that I’d make back that advance are small. It’s likely the advance money is all I’d ever see.
But since this is now, and not two years ago, I have the option of publishing it myself via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords in electronic formats. At $4.99, I’d only have to sell 48 copies a month to make that $5000 advance over the two and a half years of submitting and waiting. And, I’d have the first part of the money a year earlier than I would if I found a publisher after a year of submitting.
Now, here’s the best part. Let’s assume the likely scenario that AWW:Shattered never finds a publisher at all. Then, I’m a year or two down the road, and would have no money in my pocket.
If, in the worst case I’ve seen, I self publish AWW:Shattered and get only 10 sales per month over that same two years. I’d have an extra $838 in my pocket.
Keep in mind, I’m only talking about one book here. If I write a second and a third, and each one totally sucks and I sell no more than ten copies a month of any of them, I’m still money ahead over submitting to a publisher. If your sales are that low over a period of two years, you can pretty much guarantee a publisher wouldn’t have picked it up anyway.
One other consideration to keep in mind. The publishing industry is in a challenging period and is changing rapidly. The chances that one of the major book chains will fail in the period before AWW:Shattered could get published is high. The chances that the publisher might fail is not particularly low. There will be some publisher failures in the next couple of years. Do I want to have my book in the middle of that?
I can see little downside and a huge potential upside to publishing it myself. Besides, I enjoy the whole indie thing.
Writing vs StoryBox – It Doesn't Have To Be A Grudge Match
You may have noticed that the novel progress bar hasn’t moved much. There are several reasons for it, but it’s mostly a matter of choices.
I would like to be making better progress on Shadow, but I have other competing responsibilities and commitments. You know I make games for a living. I generally spend eight hours a day working for money to pay for the house, and the food and all the other necessities of life. I don’t have much choice about that, yet.
But next, I have to make a choice about what to work on. Writing or StoryBox. The past two weeks, it’s fallen decidedly on the StoryBox side. StoryBox has customers, and I’ve made a commitment to update it on a regular basis, at least until I realize the complete set of features that I want it to have. The vendor of the component suite that I use released an update I’d been waiting on for quite a while. I had to get StoryBox updated before I could embark on some of the newer features I want to add, and the update consumed all of my extra work time.
I could have chosen to write, and spent less time on StoryBox, but then I would not have hit my once a week update schedule that I try to keep. (Don’t hold me to that schedule – it’s not a promise, only a goal). I’ve been feeling guilty about that, too.
I realized, today, that I shouldn’t feel guilty about it. I like working on StoryBox. It has customers. It’s a living product that I have goals for. And ultimately, I’m not spending my time on the couch watching reality television, or taking time to clean the house, or surfing the web for hours on end trying to find the answer to why I’m not getting my writing done.
I didn’t get my writing done because I was working on another product that I like to work on, and that is perfectly acceptable. Sure, it wasn’t writing, but I wasn’t procrastinating, and it was important work. I’ll now be able to go back to a schedule of updating StoryBox mostly with weekend work, and I’ll be able to get back to the writing and finish Shadow.
If only someone would invent a twenty-eight hour day.
Still In St. George
Today was the last day of David Farland’s Writers Death Camp, and at this point, my brain is a bit mushy, but I’m super excited to get home and really get back to a semi-normal existence. I learned a lot. My writing, and my understanding of my writing and writing stories in general improved significantly.
Because of my new understanding, StoryBox will be getting some features that I have decided are essential to continuing to improve my writing. These will include some outlining tools, editing tools and brainstorming tools, and plot construction tools. These tools will be added on, and for the most part, you won’t be required to change your current work flow if you like what StoryBox does now.
When I am done, no other writing software will have the combination of tools that StoryBox will have, and I think these tools will provide users of StoryBox an absolutely huge advantage over users of other pieces of writing software.
In St. George
I’m here in St George, Utah now after a flight to Las Vegas (there was some concern on some persons parts as to whether I’d get stuck there) and a nice drive. I’m as excited as can be for the Writer’s Death Camp to get started tomorrow. Six days of death? I can’t wait.
Updates for StoryBox will resume when I return.