Halfway There

The good news: I’m halfway through the second draft of Sins of a Father. The second draft is coming along nicely and much faster than I’d anticipated, which I’m thankful for. I’m thoroughly enjoying this writing kick I’ve been on lately. Here’s to hoping it lasts.

The bad news: I’m tired, so no more writing for tonight. It would all be rambling gibberish that would need changed during editing anyway, so it’d be a bit pointless to keep going. I’ll get back at it tomorrow evening and try to knock out a few more chapters of draft number two.

Time to visit the land of nod. Have a good evening y’all, and an even better Sunday.

Advertisement

Fire, I am on it

The first draft of the Cherokee Johnson novella is officially complete. Not bad considering I didn’t have a whole lot of writing time this week. I’m just glad to see I’m finally making some progress on some stuff instead of stalling like I did for a couple months there.

Time to continue the second draft of the Sins of a Father novella, but first I should probably work on the guest post I promised Boomie. Hmmm, what should I write about? Any suggestions from the peanut gallery?

On a completely unrelated note, 75 Fictioneers stories this week? Holy balls! I’m pretty sure this group is growing exponentially. Chances are I won’t be hitting them all this time around. I apologize if I’ve overlooked yours. I’ll try harder next time around.

Anyway, that’s all the post there is for tonight. Here’s hoping you all have a fantastic weekend.

The next step

After the successful completion of the first draft of Sins of a Father, I’ve decided to convert Cherokee Johnson to a novella as well. I won’t be starting over from scratch though. Much of what I already wrote will still be usable, so I’m already about half done with it.

The plan is to finish off the first draft of Cherokee before I jump in to round two of Sins.

I realized that neither story needed to be novel length and I was only trying to make them fit that length to release my first novel, even though I already have a full length novel first draft written. I’m planning on working my way through the entire editing process of both novellas before I dive back into the novel though. I want to get as much writing and editing experience under my belt as I can before I crack down on that. Doing so can only make the necessary rewrites that much better.

After that, I’ve already got about a billion other ideas. I’m just not sure which one I’ll choose.

I believe it is time for maniacal laughter

I just birthed a child. That child’s name is Sins of a Father. What I mean by that is: I finished the first draft. I realize at approx 13,600 it isn’t as long as its going to be in the end, but I put a lot of work into those 13,600 words. That’s the way I do things. The first draft is always shorter than the final product, except in the case of my 100 word drabbles.

My process usually goes like this before I ever let anyone else see what I’ve written:

Step 1: Write the 1st draft. This is more or less a step by step of the story with some of, but not all of the necessary detail.

Step 2: Expand the 1st draft by adding the details I left out. I call this work of art the 2nd draft, or Jamal. For some reason second drafts enjoy being called Jamal.

Step 3: Edit Jamal. This usually shortens the length of the story by rewriting what is necessary and removing what isn’t.

Step 4: Edit again, this time searching for spelling and grammatical errors and other beasts of that variety, also rewriting a little bit more.

Step 5: Unleash the Kraken!

Don’t be stealing my methods now. I know they aren’t common at all. Okay, okay. So they’re very common, except the Jamal part. I’m probably alone on that one. I’m okay with that. Don’t deprive me of the only thing that makes me unique.

Good Weekend

After deciding to start over completely with Sins of a Father, I must admit I was a bit worried that I had dealt myself a huge setback. Turns out I was dead wrong. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I gave myself the push I needed to really get moving on the project. If I hadn’t started from scratch, odds are I wouldn’t have written a single word of it this weekend. I would have just let the weekend slip away and made more excuses for not writing, leaving me feeling unaccomplished and mad at myself.

Being re-energized from the reboot, I went into this weekend with about 2,000 words on (virtual) paper. I’m coming out of the weekend 10,000 words strong. I’d call that a very productive weekend on the writing front. I even had time to do some other stuff as well. Not sure how I managed that one, but I liked it. If I had more vacation time at work I’d take the next couple days off and finish off the 1st draft of this story. I was about 9,500 words into the first version, so I consider myself ahead of the game at this point. 8,000 words in one weekend has me super stoked. If I wasn’t out of time in the day I’d keep going.

I’m so much happier with this version than I was with the first version to boot. The change from novel to novella is the key aspect of that. I tightened the story and removed all of the unnecessary garbage. What I was left with felt right. It felt like I’d finally found the story I wanted to tell from the beginning. That’s why it was so easy hammering out 8,000 words in a couple days. Now I just have to get the rest on paper.

Here’s to hopefully finishing off the first draft by the end of next weekend, though with July 4th and a family gathering at our place next Saturday I may be pushing it. Only time will tell I suppose.