Quick update (my last one was from 5/13/10 and can be read here) for Book #8 in the Corrosive Knights series…

I printed the book out last week and started the process of reading and revising it.

Unlike the previous draft, this time around I wanted to do my revisions on the printed out book versus doing them directly on the computer (ie, using Word).

Does it make a difference?

For me, the answer is yes.

I don’t know why but when I have a physical copy of a novel before me, versus looking at the same thing on a computer screen, I seem to have access to/a clearer view of the novel and its story in its entirety.

While last time I went ahead and did the revisions completely on the computer, the fact of the matter is it was an experiment on my part and the first time I did a “full” revision that way versus printing out everything and revision with pen and then putting the revisions in the computer.

While I do believe the previous (all computer) draft moved the proverbial football forward, the experiment, I feel in retrospect, wasn’t a total success and I should stick with my preference of printing out the work and doing the revisions on the printed pages.

Please note: This is my preference and I’m certain other authors have theirs but for me, I will continue to print the whole thing out and revise the work that way from here on in.

Having said all that, let us get to the good stuff!

My update for today is: I’m just a tiny bit shy of halfway through the book and while there are things I need to fix up, at least for this half of the book, I seem to be moving into the grammatical/spelling area versus the active creative writing.

This is significant -and pardon me if I’m repeating myself as I am certain I have written about this before with previous books- because when I’m happy with the story as written and feel there is not much more to add, things tend to move quickly once I am in the grammatical/spelling focus. Indeed, when my sole preoccupation is to make the story read well versus coming up with new scenarios/story ideas , things move much more quickly to their end.

Having said all that, a word of caution: I am just shy of 1/2 way through the book. There is quite a bit of story still in front of me and we will see how that plays out and whether that half requires more creative writing than the first half.

Having said all that (redux), I still feel I’m ahead of schedule with regard to finishing this novel versus previous works.

While there were several false starts early on which cost me many months of work (ouch), once I found my direction it seemed like things fell into place a lot easier than they have with other novels.

It could be a sign of my growth as a writer or it could be that this time around I “got lucky” in that the plot worked itself out easier than before.

Either way, I remain optimistic this novel can be finished up in/around the end of Summer.

As soon as it is, I will let you know!

On April the 14th, 2020, I printed out the latest copy of my latest Corrosive Knights novel, Book #8…

Last time I wrote an update about this book (you can read it here) it was April 29th and I was roughly 1/2 way through the revision process and…

…I was feeling a bit down.

Frankly, I was a little disappointed by the progress of the 3rd Draft revision and the realization of how much I still had to “fix” or “rewrite” before finishing up that draft.

Sometimes, the amount of work you have to still do gets to you.

Especially when what you thought would be a quick turnaround becomes longer and more involved. When there’s that much more work involved, it has a way of wearing you down.

However…

Just as one has their good and bad days, so too do I have my ups and downs with the writing process.

Today, I put the finishing touches on Draft #3 of Book #8 and… I’m really happy with what I’ve got here.

Yeah, it turned out I had to put in extra efforts and some things I thought were damn good/didn’t need much work did, but as I sit here today after finishing writing what is effectively a new Epilogue to the book (and a much shorter one, to boot), and as I look back in my rear view mirror at the work I’ve put into this book and where it stands today versus in mid-April…

Things are looking pretty damn good.

I like what I have and what I have, I feel, is really close to being done.

I’ve mentioned it before: On average I’ve found myself going through 12 Drafts with my latest batch of novels. A strange number, I grant you, and it seemed that was the amount -not 11, not 13- that needed to be done before my books were “ready” to be released.

Even as I started up the 3rd draft of this current novel, I felt like it was closer to being complete than those other novels. Much, much closer given the fact that we were so early into the revision process.

I even mused in previous posts that maybe this book would take only 5 or so drafts before it was ready. A remarkable turnaround from 12!

Welp…

still feel like I won’t be needing 12 drafts to complete this book. In fact, I’m confident enough to say that I won’t need anywhere near that amount.

However, I’m not so sure 5 drafts will do it either.

Tomorrow I plan to print out the current draft and begin the process of reading and revising it and thus starting Draft #4 of the book. When I’m done with this draft, I’ll be, I feel, damn close to finishing up this novel.

At the very least, the book will be that much closer to complete.

However, I think I’ll need at least 2 or 3 more drafts after this next one, which means that if I’m now on #4, we’re looking at finishing up with Draft #6 or 7, and there is obviously no guarantee things might drag a little beyond that, too.

Having said that, each new draft should take me less and less time to finish up and whether I’m done with Draft #6, 7, or (baring any problems I find along that way) #8 or above, there is a good chance I may be finished with this novel by the end of Summer.

We’re obviously still a long way from there and my next update, when I’m finished -or near finished- with Draft #4 should give me an even clearer idea of where I stand.

But finishing up this book by the end of Summer?

Man, I hope so…!

Regardless, I’ll keep you updated!

It’s been roughly two weeks (actually, just a little shy of that) since my last update (you can read it here) and I figured it was time to give a new update.

So I printed out the latest Corrosive Knights novel, #8, and decided this time around I’d do something different with the revision of draft #3 of the book: Instead of reading through the printed copy of it, writing up a bunch of corrections, then going to the computer and putting them into a new copy, I’d strike while the proverbial iron is hot and just read and revise the book on the computer simultaneously.

I didn’t know how it would work out.

On the one hand, printing the book out and revising the printed work allows me to more easily flip back and forth through the pages, sometimes even quite literally cutting up pieces of a page here and there and taping it to another section. This sounds dreadfully low tech and it is, but lining up all the “cut” pieces does allow you to look them over better than the way it is presented on the computer screen, at least for me!

On the other hand, because much of what I wrote I felt was pretty good as it was, I found there were sections I was able to whiz through, making my corrections as I found the “errors” and not wasting as much time as I might have.

But, in the end, have I saved time? I haven’t finished the third draft yet. In fact, I’m roughly 1/2 of the way through the thing but do feel the second half is a lot stronger/better developed than the first half, which did require some big changes. Bigger changes = more rewriting/new writing = more time.

If I had printed the whole thing out and revised it first, would I today be done with the read through and placement of corrections on paper? Would I now be entering the revisions on the computer stage?

Or is it possible I’d still be reading the printed out stuff and working on fixes?

Hard to say, really.

But it does bring me to the inevitable reality check one seems to always face: As optimistic as you may be about your work (and in that last post I wrote I was damned optimistic about how things were going), one shouldn’t get too excited -as I admit I did- about where things are because when you get to the next revision and it turns out what you have isn’t quite as great as you thought it was, it can really take the proverbial wind out of your sails.

Mind you, I wasn’t entirely wrong in my last post. I do still feel this book is further along than the others I’ve written. For a third draft, it is remarkably “complete”, story wise. This in turn means I’ll be getting that much quicker to the stage of dealing with grammatical/writing issues, rather than dealing with the more time consuming creative writing stuff.

Yet I’d be lying if I said that the work I’ve done in the last two weeks didn’t do just that: Deflate my sails just a little.

As I said, I’m halfway through the book right now and I’ve done a lot of fixing up, especially in the very early going of the book. I still feel there is some work to be done there but I don’t want to get totally bogged down with fixing every little detail at this point.

Part of the revision process involves assimilating the entire novel into your mind, realizing how one detail leads to the next and the next and the next. Sometimes something that happens on page 6 of the book becomes important on page 106.

So I plow along, fixing the big stuff while slowly memorizing almost every element of the story. I suppose its not unlike an actor memorizing a play, only in this case I memorize not just one role, but all of them.

When one has a clearer global view of the book, from page 1 to the very end, one then knows the actions on that theoretical page 6 should go this way or that. You maximize the elements, whether it be dialogue or action, so that when you get to the theoretical payoff or reference to that action/dialogue on page 106, you hope everything is there for the readers to make that connection.

Hopefully by the very end, when your reader gets to that last page and it all comes to an end, every plot point or bit of dialogue made sense and led you to that very ending and you close the book (or turn off your Kindle app) with a satisfied smile on your face.

In the very end, I am to make you as a reader satisfied.

I’ll get back to you when I’m done with Draft #3!

As I wrote before a few days ago, if there is any upside to this whole Coronavirus mess its that with the “free” time I’ve come into I’m able to focus a lot more on my writing and have put in many more hours doing so of late.

On Monday, the 13th of April, I finished the 2nd full draft of Book #8 in the Corrosive Knights series.

And I’m damn happy with the end results!

Usually when I get to the end of a second draft of any of my novels, I’m still a pretty long way from having what I consider a “complete” draft. I might have quite a bit of the plot to sort through or there might be big chunks or pieces missing. Hell, there might be quite a bit to re-do, story wise, before heading to the later stages/drafts which require more grammatical review than anything else.

Welp, in this case I feel like I’ve gotten most of the story elements done. There are a few things that need to be smoothed over and/or expanded upon, but the story, beginning, middle, and conclusion, are effectively finished…

…and to my liking!

I truly believe I’m one more draft away from having all the story elements in their place and perhaps another two or three drafts away from being done with the book entirely!

In other words, I might be done with this book by Draft #5 versus my usual twelve drafts…!

Needless to say, I’m very excited because I can envision -provided no pitfalls appear along the way- being done with this book by either the middle or late summer versus toward the end of the year.

Obviously things could change and dramatically but I’m excited with where I’m at today.

Yesterday, I printed the whole thing out and starting today or tomorrow I’m going to start the revision.

Let’s see how quickly I make it through Draft #3, shall we?

If there’s one thing going through this current Coronavirus isolation has helped its my writing.

With no where to go and keeping our outdoor excursions (usually to get groceries or some such), there is plenty of free time for me to sit in front of the computer and bang away at my latest Corrosive Knights novel.

Of late -and I hope I’m not jinxing myself- I’ve been on a bit of a creative tear, over halfway through the second full draft of the book and feeling pretty positive about what I’ve written.

Like, really positive.

If you’ve read any of my previous Corrosive Knights novel updates, I often wrote about the painstaking effort it took to make each book, going over line after line, paragraph after paragraph, chapter after chapter, revising and re-revising, often going some 12 drafts before feeling the novel is good enough to be released.

But this book… I don’t know.

It feels like the elements are all there, coming into focus much better/quicker than ever before. While getting that first draft took a really long time -I’m roughly 1 year and three months into writing this book- it feels as I write this second draft that things are clicking much better.

What got me hung up was that I had a mis-start, thinking I’d be making the fabled Epilogue book. Welp, I worked on that for a while before I started to move into another direction and, eventually, I realized I wasn’t interested in doing that Epilogue and instead began writing a whole new novel.

And it was difficult to do so for a while but, as I was finishing up that first draft, it seemed things were essentially falling into place.

Once again and at the risk of jinxing myself, it sure feels like this book, when all is said and done, won’t take 12 drafts.

Not at all!

The question is: How many drafts will it take?

If it takes, say, half the usual 12 drafts, some 6 drafts, then this book might be done relatively quickly.

The early drafts of each of my novels are the hardest to do and take the longest time. Once I have the plot generally “set” we start moving toward fixing grammar and cleaning up the storytelling and that usually gets done relatively quickly.

So if I’m nearly past the harder part, ie setting up the plot, and might quickly move to the editing/grammar/cleaning up storytelling, then things might go pretty quickly.

Perhaps, after writing so much, maybe I’m finally learning how to do things a little more quickly?

We’ll see.

*******

I haven’t mentioned it before but I’m On Reddit nowadays and, if you’d like to follow my postings, you can do so… provided I don’t bore/infuriate you with my opinions!

Usually I’m talking about movies or music, two subjects I love to blab about.

So if you’re interested in following me, while on Reddit do a search and type in:

u/Corrosive-Knights

And there I am.

If you have an account on Reddit, hit the follow button and you can read my ramblings!

It’s been increasingly hard for me to find the time to write these entries of late.

Too much time spend working and, frankly, I’m really weary. Like trying-not-to-fall-asleep-as-I-type-this weary.

The daylights savings, of course, didn’t help, as each time this happens, whether we move forward or back, it seems my body has a harder and harder time adjusting to the changes and wonders just what the hell I’m up to out there.

Last week in particular was extremely grueling, though I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice to say someone went on vacation and I had to handle the slack… and it seemed like everything conspired against me to make every day they were gone absolute torture.

Despite this, we’re out of the fire now and most of the issues have been dealt with.

I’ve scratched away whatever time I can get to work on the latest Corrosive Knights novel, which will be book #8 in the series but will hopefully be good enough to stand on its own.

These last few days I’ve felt myself on fire, moving through what I feel will be one of the better, more suspenseful parts of the novel and moving into the second and last half… ish.

There are still plenty of things up in the air regarding that second half of the novel but at least for the first half I feel like I’ve accomplished mostly what I’ve wanted to. I’m cautiously optimistic many of these parts of the book will not require too terribly much in terms of revision and corrections but, once again, we’re still rather early in the process so who knows.

This is the second draft of the book I’m working on now and while there are still holes here and there that need to be filled, the bulk of the story and characters are figured out.

So its off to get myself a cup of coffee and off to work.

Let’s see how things work out today!

It’s been a hard couple of weeks, let me tell you.

As the expression goes, sometimes you need a vacation from/after your vacation to recover.

Our holiday vacation was great but boy did we move around. A lot. When it was over and we got back we did some more moving around before finally returning home. The next day it was back to work and its been crushing the amount of it to deal with.

On the writing front, it was only this week that I’ve finally been able to get back into Book #8 of the Corrosive Knights saga.

When I left it toward the end of 2019, I had the first draft done. Understand, the first draft of any work of mine doesn’t necessarily mean all the details are in place and all I have to do is tidy up some sentences here and there and release the book.

In this case, what I had was a very rough map of the book but an incomplete one. There were parts I wrote which I knew I would go back and change and/or eliminate. There were other parts that would require compression or expansion. I left the book in 2019 also knowing that there were more scenes I needed to come up with to add to the overall story.

As incomplete as that first draft of the book was, however, I had my road map and I now knew where/how the book began, played out, and ended. It may sound obvious but when I began this book I had no clear idea of any of those elements.

Truly, I entered the book blind, which can be kinda scary but also incredibly liberating.

As I worked on that first draft, I had a couple of introductory sequences written which I will likely eliminate entirely. It’s the price one pays for figuring out a book on the spot: Your first ideas may wind up being useless.

What they do is get your mind in gear, moving and thinking about possibilities and with that, ideas which might work out.

Slowly, at times very painfully, I’d realize certain things simply weren’t working despite my best efforts. Yet in that failure I often -though not always- found alternatives, ideas that did work and which were expanded upon. It seemed for every idea that failed, there would be another that didn’t, and slowly, ever so slowly, that first draft started to take shape over the course of roughly a year, until just before the vacation I had that one breakthrough that wrapped it all up and made me realize I had a book.

This week, as I stated, I started working on it again after my vacation. Beginning this second draft entails First reading Through my first draft and eliminating all that stuff I said didn’t work, tightening up the stuff that does, and expanding where the book needs it. Plenty of red marker notes, scratched sentences/paragraphs/pages, and much use of sticky notes. Once that’s done I get to the computer and put all those notes into the book while eliminating what needs to go.

In many, perhaps even most ways, the second draft of this book will very much be a part of the formal writing process and, when all is done, I expect the book to contain most, if not all, the elements I need in it.

Thus Draft #2 is like an extension of Draft #1. Perhaps to other writers it may well be that, and they view any draft which involves creative writing versus proofreading as part of the first draft process.

Regardless, for me this is crunch time and while there are moments of elation in going over this draft, there are certain to be plenty of moments of hard, hard, hard work.

Despite what it may seem like, writing ain’t easy. It takes -at least for me- total concentration and no distractions and easily chews up your time.

Yet the most beautiful thing in the world is holding your latest novel in your hand and thinking: I did that.

I can’t wait to feel that again…!

Big news, for those interested: I have finished up the first draft of Book #8 in the Corrosive Knights series.

I suppose I should once again -and for the last time- show this graphic:

Why for the last time? Because I’ve got to upgrade it. Book #8 is NOT going to be the Epilogue to the series.

But if you’ve been reading my updates, you know this already.

Still, I’ll point it out again: As things worked out and I created more and more Corrosive Knights novels, I came up with a way to conclude the main story line with book #7, Legacy of the Argus.

However, there was still one story I had tucked in my proverbial back pocket, a story that was essentially written out, which I felt would serve as a lovely “finale” -or epilogue- for the Corrosive Knights series.

However, redux, releasing that story meant I would wrap up the Corrosive Knights series and move on into other stories unrelated to it.

It seemed the right thing to do. While writing the final two books in the series, I was feeling the first twinges of what can only be described as fatigue. It’s not easy to juggle so many balls in the air, creatively, and come up with something you feel is worth releasing which adds to the series while never screwing with whatever came before.

I was elated as the end drew near, that countless re-writes and revisions were almost over. I would finish the series, in my mind, wonderfully with Legacy of the Argus then do a few revisions on and release the Epilogue before moving on to other things.

Only… when I actually finished Legacy of the Argus, I not only felt relief that I “stuck the landing” and created a great seven part book series, I also realized the fatigue I felt -perhaps something bordering on being burnt out- was lifted.

Gone.

Completely.

I was so proud and happy of my accomplishments. As I moved on to that Epilogue story, I was hit with waves of second thoughts.

Did I really have to end this series?

I wondered.

Another part of me asked, where do I go from here?

I pulled up the Epilogue and considered it. It was very short, only some 20,000 words long (my novels tend to be 100,000+ words). I worked on a new introduction to it, a way to expand the story and provide some exciting new material.

My mind wandered. New ideas worked their way into my head. Ideas for another story.

It was the first time in quite a while I started up a novel with no clear view of what I wanted to do with it. It was equally clear that I didn’t want to release that Epilogue story.

At least not yet.

So I worked and worked. If I were a sculptor, it would be like getting this massive slab of marble and chipping away at it here and there, not having a clear idea of the statue you were creating, but coming up with concepts that moved you closer to that end result.

Over the past week, and after writing a considerable amount of material, it all came together. I had my ending and it was solid.

More than that: I thought it was terrific.

I was busy these past few weeks, with family over and things to do for Thanksgiving. I likely won’t have too much time to work on the book between now and New Years, as there will be much family fare to do as well.

Nonetheless I printed the whole thing out yesterday and, as time allows, I’ll work on what is now the second draft of this book. I’ll be reading through this massive printout and cutting it down to size before adding stuff that isn’t there which should be.

There’s a lot of work yet to be done but it feels like I’m further ahead than usual. I’m certain this book will be ready sometime in the new year.

And you know what?

I can’t wait.

Been a while since I’ve offered any updates on Book #8 in the Corrosive Knights series and figured it was time to do so.

This past weekend was something of a breakthrough weekend in the writing of the book and I believe I have a much stronger grasp on the ending I’ll be using within.

The process of writing is an interesting one and, for me anyway, it seems that no two books are written in quite the same way. Often, I have a strong idea for a start and ending and its the pesky middle sections that unite the two that wind up causing me the most mental work.

Usually, though, I do have a relatively strong idea of what I want to write about and often my imagination takes over as I’m physically sitting behind the computer typing.

New ideas flow, sometimes damn good ones, sometimes so-so ones, and sometimes ideas that eventually get discarded.

Over the weekend a damn good idea popped up in my head involving the story’s ending and… we’ll see. I like it a lot, but it may wind up causing me to change quite a bit of the novel written to date.

I’m fast approaching my novel’s usual word count, often just north of 100,000 words, and I do feel like I have the bones of a good novel set up. I’m hoping that perhaps in the next few weeks and certainly before Christmas/New Year’s I’ll have my first full draft done.

Unlike other novels, I feel much of what I’ve written is quite good and doesn’t require considerable revision, at least the stuff that doesn’t relate to this story ending I came up with over the weekend.

In previous books, I’ve had to work really hard on the revisions, making the descriptions sharper and cutting down on repetition. Thankfully, it seems like some of these old bad habits of early drafts are becoming less and less an issue.

Or, to put it another way, perhaps I’m becoming a better first draft writer and am not stumbling in the dark quite as much as before.

What that means, in the long run and hopefully, is that when I do finally finish this first solid draft of the novel, the amount of work needed to polish it up for release should be a little easier.

In pervious novels, I’ve noted its taken me up to 12 drafts before I feel a book is ready to be released. Perhaps this time around it won’t be quite that many.

Regardless, the book is proceeding along and, again hopefully, I’m farther ahead than I usually am in/around this time in writing a book.

I’m excited about it, always a good thing, and I can’t wait to present it sometime in the new year!

A while back (you can read it here) I thanked everyone who, to that point, had taken the time to not only read my Corrosive Knights novels, but also taken the time to either write reviews or give the novels a “star” rating which pops up on Goodreads.com.

Since that first posting, I’m beyond honored that my novels seem to continue being both read (almost all the Corrosive Knights novels are available to be read through Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program) and purchased and positive reviews of them keep coming in.

In the first posting, we had 77 ratings for a total score of 4.18 out of 5 stars. Since that point, we’ve moved to 93 ratings and our score remains remarkably consistent, now at 4.17 out of 5 stars.

Hopefully, I’ll soon get to see my books reach 100 ratings… and beyond!

This year has easily been the best I’ve had with regard to people reading and purchasing my novels. Since releasing the seventh book in the series, Legacy of the Argus, back in November of 2018 and redoing all the covers to the books, every day -save for maybe a handful since January- has movement on the books.

As a small time, independent writer, it pleases me to see so many people checking out my works and, of course, enjoying them enough to offer positive feedback. While I’m not so obnoxious to think that my books appeal to everyone, I’m pleased because the impression I’m getting is that those who have tried the books have plunged in deep, reading multiple novels and/or the full run.

To be clear: I can’t “see” who exactly reads the books or the amount of pages each individual reads, but I can, from day to day, see the number of pages of each novel that is read through Kindle Unlimited. And when I see one particular novel suddenly getting, say, 500+ pages read in a single day, I think its a safe assumption whomever is reading the particular novel is enjoying it enough to blow through it.

In my case, if I do so with a novel it means I’m really enjoying it and am eager to get to the end.

I hope the same applies to my works with other readers!

Regardless, once again a BIG thank you to everyone who’s given me their time and read my novels.

I hope to keep surprising and entertaining you guys with my future works!