A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Editing Forum

After a year that included long hours and yet another job switch (back to the previous company in May), I finally got busy again editing Shadows of the Knight.  Well, a funny thing happened on the way to the editing forum!  As I ran through my list of checks and edits for book #1 of the Vampire Chess saga, the story for book #2 was running wildly through my head.  As foreshadowed in my last blog post, the temptation proved to be too powerful to resist.  I just finished writing the first draft of Order & Chaos!

Once I started writing, I just couldn't stop.  The first draft of book #2 weighs in about five thousand words heavier than the previous book was at first draft.  While Shadows of the Knight is currently sitting at over 254k words and Order & Chaos is over 227k words, I expect the second book to surpass its predecessor by the time I finish the first full edit.  They will combine to tally over a half million words when my editing is finally done!

I am extremely happy with the way the plots and subplots came alive in Order & Chaos!  To use a volleyball analogy, Shadows of the Knight is the set while Order & Chaos is the spike.  I look forward to the challenge of maintaining the same fast pace through the remaining three books of the saga.  For now though, my focus needs to return to finishing my edits on the first book (although the way the plot lines flow through the two books, I'll probably be editing both simultaneously).  If nothing else, at least there won't be a long wait for a sequel when readers get their hands on my first book!

Milestone

Nearly 15 months after I finished writing the first draft of Shadows of the Knight, I have finally completed my first full edit of the novel! My editing was slowed considerably after I changed jobs back in February and found my available time evaporate but I managed to gain momentum in recent weeks to complete the first round. The novel currently weighs in at 252,180 words and printed out at 409 pages in its current format (it would kill considerably more trees to print once I switch it over to manuscript format). It is a major thrill to know that if someone picked up the draft right now, it would be fairly coherent and hopefully somewhat entertaining.

My next phase should be much shorter in duration. I plan on visiting a hundred or so notes that I've jotted down over the last 15 months. Some of the notes are fledgling ideas of additional plot elements to tighten the fabric of the novel. Some are just notes to check to see if a previous idea made it into text or never left the gray matter. Some will be resolved in minutes with little impact to the draft while a few might add a handful of new paragraphs to the novel. I won't kid myself and set a specific date to complete this phase but it should certainly be refreshingly quicker than the first tedious edit.

I am hoping after the second phase is finished, I can lock myself away to do a quick read for editing and then finally release Shadows of the Knight for its first test run with a select few personal critics. As always, I will be fighting the urge to pen the remaining four books of the Vampire Chess saga before completing the work necessary to get the first one published.

Vanishing Time

Well, so much for finishing the first full edit by the end of the summer! A pleasant diversion earlier in the summer renewed my interest in my old hockey fan web site (The Unofficial Web Site of the Trenton Titans). After a rough four years as the Trenton Devils, the ECHL affiliate owned by the NHL's New Jersey Devils, the parent company pulled the plug on the franchise. However, the ECHL and a hardcore band of fans (not to mention two wonderful investors and a supportive local government) wasted no time in resurrecting the Trenton Titans for the upcoming 2011/2012 ECHL season! Naming longtime Titan defenseman Vince Williams as their head coach and securing former Titans general manager Rich Lisk and Titan icon Scott Bertoli to help return the franchise to former greatness instilled instant enthusiasm in a fan base that was just itching for a revival. Thrilled by the dramatic return of Titans, I immediately got to work updating years worth of neglected files for the web site that went dark in the fall of 2008 after a couple of years of dormancy. That hobby instantly swiped editing time but was soon trumped by the call of the corporate world. A few curve balls at the day job quickly put my plans to revive the site on ice (hopefully only temporarily).

While increased hours at work set back the web site plans, I resumed my dedication to squeezing in a little bit of time to edit Shadows of the Knight. I've crept past the 70% mark reviewing the novel that has grown to nearly 247k words. I'll save my predictions for when the first edit will be finished but rest assured that the editing continues and the plot lines and character development keep tightening. It will be a real challenge for me to move forward with the first novel when this edit is finished as I'm itching to start writing Order & Chaos, though I've heard from enough amateur authors who let the manuscripts pile up to be careful of that trap. Wish me luck as the grand juggling act continues!

Knight Writer

So, after a virtual hiatus that lasted a few months, I am finally back editing Shadows of the Knight on a regular basis. Despite late hours at work, I've been able to squeeze in time many nights lately to edit a few chapters before surrendering to sleep. If I can keep up the current pace, I should be able to finish the first full round of editing during the summer. Then perhaps I'll allow the first rough draft to escape the dungeon for a few daring critics.

In the meantime, the outlines for the future volumes of my saga continue to evolve as the characters and plots churn away in my head. I find it ironic how listening to audiobooks during my commute to and from work elicits sudden ideas for my own novels even though the ones I'm listening to are from completely different genres. It would probably take a highly skilled psychoanalyst to figure out the slightest connection between the point in the audiobook and the ideas that emerge. On the topic of authors, I must give thanks to my friend Pam for recommending Orson Scott Card and Harlan Coben. I find both authors very entertaining and expect to exhaust my library's audiobook offerings for them in short order.

Good night for now... I'm off to finish editing another chapter!

The Challenge of Time

So... Two months have passed by and I have made very little forward progress editing Shadows of the Knight. The biggest challenge to finding time to edit has been a surprise change in my day job. In January, I was approached with an opportunity to return to the company where I worked from 1996 through 2008 in a challenging new role. After evaluating and accepting the offer, I spent the next few weeks focusing on transitioning my responsibilities at the company where I worked the past two years and four plus months. Then I started the new job and have been focusing on my new responsibilities there.

I've kept the plots and characters alive and well during my commutes and other times not suitable for editing yet available for reflection but will need to make a dedicated effort to find additional time. Starting tomorrow evening, I will begin carving out a little time each day to edit my novel. Even if time only allows me to edit one or two pages some nights, I will be sure to keep the forward progress rolling to craft my novel into a solid draft ready for the first round of critics.

Shadows of the Knight

Edit... Edit... Edit... The new year begins with me just over 30% through my first full edit of Shadows of the Knight - my first novel. I expect the editing processing to continue on for a few more months before I arrive at the first draft I deem ready for 'external consumption'. At that time, I'll release the draft to a select list of friends to receive the first round of critiques. After that, I will no doubt engage in a few months of additional editing before converting my draft to manuscript format to test the publishing waters for the first time.

Shadows of the Knight is the first book in my planned saga that will span at least four or five books. Most of the major plots, subplots and characters for the remaining books were outlined before I began writing the first book but will continue to evolve as I write and edit. As vampire fiction, the books seem to be best classified as "urban fantasy" although I struggle to find any book or series that I would closely compare them to. I hope readers will find them both entertaining and somewhat original.

My SOTK draft is currently 387 pages in MS Word but at over 237k words, it will be much larger in formal manuscript and book formats. As I am still fleshing out some chapters during the initial editing process, I expect the final draft to land somewhere in the neighborhood of the largest of the Harry Potter novels. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was 870 pages with 257,045 words. At that rate, SOTK would currently translate to an 805 page novel.

The First Forty

During my first four decades of existence, it's regrettable that I rarely seized the opportunity to write creatively despite a life filled with writing. The only notable exception that I can recall from my childhood was a series of whimsical newspapers I wrote for the amusement of my immediate family. The brief newspapers combined current events with my random thoughts at the time. I can not remember any creative writing whatsoever taking place in elementary or middle school until I was in the seventh grade. Most of my writing up to this point was either essays or reports for class assignments or the never-ending "lists". I think it's safe to say that I've been a somewhat compulsive list writer my entire life, whether it's keeping tabs on a sports team roster (or league), listing favorite movies, listing my former cassette tape collection or an endless array of other topics. I'm learning to harness that energy now for the creation of my fiction.

It was during seventh grade that I began writing what can best be loosely described as "V" fan fiction. I was an avid fan of the two science fiction miniseries and the subsequent television series. I was also bored out of my skull in class despite finally having classes that provided academic challenge. To the amusement, torture and perhaps occasional entertainment of a precious few classmates, I penned a half dozen or so five-subject notebooks worth of 'pulp fiction'. The plots and character development were as thin as the notebook paper they were written on, crude parodies of the science fiction I was a fan of. When I was writing the novellas, there was shamefully more focus on eliciting a reaction from classmates than crafting good fiction. In fairness, I doubt they had any literary value or potential.

By high school, I was doing plenty of writing but it was mostly dry essays and term papers for honors and advanced placement English. Two assignments that stand out from the reams: a 'Philosophy of Life' paper and a short story that I believe was titled "Like A Brother". The Philosophy of Life paper was probably the first class assignment that truly allowed me to write the way my brain thought. The paper earned an "A" from the infamous Dr. Godbold with the comment, "One of the most lucid and thoughtful and provoking philosophies I read." I can only hope that a piece of my future fiction earns similar praise some day but I start my journey with far more modest goals.

The short story was also a proud accomplishment. Not only did it earn one of the highest marks in the class at the time, it was my first fictional work that had I judged to have any literary merit. It was a story I solidified as scenes in my mind over many days then ultimately wrote it in one sitting as I 'watched' it. Unfortunately, I made no copy of the story and the original was lost by my teacher rather than returned after summer break as I hoped. In the years that followed, I made a number of attempts to recreate the story but each effort felt inferior and ended up in the trash.

Six years of college produced many more reams of technical lab reports, term papers and various other writing assignments completely devoid of creativity. When I finally enrolled in a class with creative writing assignments, I found my Composition professor's feedback to be rather scathing. While none of my work was particularly memorable even by my own standards, I was still shocked by the harsh reception to what I did write in that class. I don't remember any specifics of the critiques but the overall impression certainly left its mark on my ego at the time.

Perhaps my two most noteworthy writing samples from the college years came as I completed my Masters degree in Psychology. "The Self-Report Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule: Reliability and Validity" is a thesis that was delivered without acclaim. Fourteen years later, it looks rather paltry considering the countless hours that went into researching, writing and editing it. Ironically, what did receive surprise acclaim months earlier was a lengthy resignation letter I wrote when leaving an internship to concentrate my focus on coursework and my thesis. Multiple readers of the letter independently gave me praise for how well it was written.

My love of hockey did afford me the opportunity to write creatively after college. I ran a minor league hockey fan website called "The Unofficial Web Site of the Trenton Titans" for several years. From its humble beginnings, the web site grew to several hundred pages of text (in addition to the hundreds of fine photos provided by Peter Bronsteen). Beyond the player profiles and countless lists, I wrote a non-stop stream of rants, game recaps and articles, some of which scratched the surface of my underlying creativity. In its heyday, the web site probably had just over a hundred faithful followers. During this time, I also wrote a few articles covering the Titans for "Just Hockey" magazine, one or two of which may have shown some hint of writing potential.

Yet, throughout the decades, I wrote very little fiction despite a cavalcade of ideas racing through my mind more often than not. Some of the ideas grew to near Walter Mitty proportions and lasted for many months but they never managed to escape to find the light of day in print. I made a handful of false starts writing stories over the years but nothing that ever amounted to more than a handful of pages of fiction that were soon abandoned. The true potential remained untapped.

Now, the troll has finally escaped from the dungeon. After years of developing the characters, plots, subplots, history and the rest of a fictional world, I have started writing my first novel, the beginning of a planned saga of at least four or five novels. I finished writing the first very raw draft of the novel last month and have begun the long process of editing and polishing it. I expect to finalize the first draft for external consumption sometime in 2011.