Editing is more than fixing typos. Over the past few months, I have gone into detective mode — reading and re-reading my story and taking notes about what I need to add, what I need to cut, and what I need to reorder. Writing a novel takes a lot of time, and a lot of things — including characters and writing style — can (and should) evolve as you write. Sometimes as I write, I know that a scene doesn’t quite work, but don’t have an immediate solution. Rather than bash my head against the wall, I just move on to the next scene, because in my experience the perfect solution often comes along later when I’m solving something else.
Sometimes, editing feels like this. But it’s worth it! Credit: @GUARNIERI / ELLO
Cutting scenes can be hard. One of my problems is that I’ll write a joke or a bit dialogue that I believe is terribly clever, but in fact does nothing for the story. Usually my wife and editing ally Mallika calls me out on (and ruthlessly chides me for) such passages. It’s hard to hit the delete button, but in the end it’s better for the overall story. This is why I always am wary of new editions of novels or movies that restore previously cut material. In most cases, scenes or chapters are cut for a reason.
While I have cut some unnecessary segments in The Wanderer since the first draft, I’ve also added a few chapters in the middle to fill what I saw as a void in the plot. Without giving much away, there’s a part about two-thirds of the way through when the heroes decide to go stop the bad guy. In my original draft, however, there didn’t seem to be quite enough pushing them to make that decision beyond my fervent wishes as the author. As I went to work coming up with a new episode, I inadvertently addressed a few other weaknesses along the way (remember what I said before about waiting for the perfect solution?). I didn’t just fill a plot hole; I created one of my favorite sequences in the novel!
Editing is hard. It takes a lot of time. But it’s also a lot of fun. And when you read the end product, I think you’ll agree it’s worth it.
I am happy to say I’m getting close to the finish line for my edits, but of course, that will only mark the start of the next challenge: getting the story through someone who does this for a living — a professional editor! How’s that going to go? Stay tuned!
I am not one of those authors who writes on a typewriter. How do you delete?! No, I need tech to keep me organized and to give me the flexibility to jot down ideas or do actual writing on the go.
Here are the apps and gadgets I currently rely on the most for writing:
Evernote
Logo credit: Evernote
I often get ideas for my stories when I’m riding a subway or walking in the park. I can either keep reciting the idea in my head over and over until it was pounded into my memory, or I can just make a quick note on my phone using Evernote. The app syncs notes across all my devices, so when I get back to my computer at home, it’s right there and ready for me to act upon!
Scrivener
The corkboard view in Scrivener keeps me organized. photo Credit: literature & latte
Look, Word is a great app and I still use it for short things like letters and news stories. But novels, which can be 80,000 to 100,000 words, get unwieldy real fast. If you need to refer to some detail earlier in the story, you’ve either got to do a lot of scrolling, or try to remember a specific phrase and search for it in the text. If you realize Chapter 8 should really be Chapter 6, you’ve got to cut and paste (and it’s scary to do a Ctrl+X on an entire chapter), and then renumber all the affected chapters.
Scrivener does all of this for me and I don’t have to panic. It puts each of my chapters and each of my scenes into notecards that I can reorder at will through drag and drop. It all displays a list of everything in a convenient sidebar that I can use to jump around my book at will. And it backs up everything, so if disaster strikes, I can restore my project! I can even take snapshots of scenes I’m about to massively revamp, just in case I change my mind later. Brilliant!
Microsoft Surface 3
Surface 3. I don’t use it to research plant cells, though. photo Credit: Microsoft
This is my latest tool, and I’m already loving it. I needed something light and portable so I could write on the go without feeling like I was carrying a bowling ball in my backpack. I also needed something with a decent battery life. Finally, and this is critical, I didn’t want to pay heaps of money for a Surface Pro 3.
Surface 3, the Atom-based cousin of Surface Pro, meets these requirements handily. It’s a beautifully engineered device that’s perfect for writing at the café. cases. It’s not my main PC, so I didn’t need it to be super powerful. I just needed something with a clear screen and a decent keyboard that runs Scrivener okay. Sold.
My only complaint is that Microsoft totally gets you with the separately sold keyboard and pen. These things are essential to the experience, and you end up paying almost $200 more than you expected. I know, I know, I could have gone Macbook Air, but I’m stuck on Windows.
Oh well, at least it’s kept me writing! Time to finish that novel…
Today’s indie authors can punch above their weight and take on traditionally published authors, says The Fussy Librarian founder Jeffrey Bruner.
The Fussy Librarian, based in Des Moines, Iowa, sends daily book recommendations to readers based on their preferences.
“The line between ‘industry’ authors and ‘self-published’ authors has just about vanished,” Bruner, a former journalist for Gannett, tells me. “An author can hire a cover designer and copy editor and produce a book that looks and reads just as well as anything by the big publishers.”
The marketing budget possessed by big publishers might not be as big an advantage as authors think when deciding between indie and traditional publishing, he says.
“The marketing budget of the big publishers usually goes to only a handful of titles — the superstars like James Patterson, John Grisham, etc.,” says Bruner. “Everyone else is getting the crumbs.”
“The fact is that they only do [extensive marketing] if you are Hillary Clinton or you’re David Beckham,” Kawasaki said last year. “They don’t do it for the other 10,000 authors every year because frankly they can’t call the New York Times 10,000 times every year.”
Bruner says that indie authors can do a lot with a little. “Self-published authors don’t need to have a huge marketing budget — just enough to create what Kevin Kelly calls 1,000 true fans. Once you have established that base, they will provide the word of mouth to boost you to 50,000, 100,000, 500,000, etc. But the book has to come first and it’s got to be great.”
He points to many tools available to indie authors today, including Rafflecopter for giveaways, MailChimp for mailing list management and PayPal for e-commerce.
“I’m not saying it would have been impossible to self-publish a bestseller 15 years ago, but it’s a lot easier now.”
Meet The Fussy Librarian
The Fussy Librarian connects indie authors with discerning readers.
The Fussy Librarian seeks to help readers find well-written books, regardless of how they were published.
“We want to be your personal librarian, the person you can turn to when you want to read a good book,” says Bruner. “We’re like a matchmaker for readers.”
The company knows it must court authors if it wants to provide a valuable service to readers.
“Our business doesn’t exist without readers, so they have to be our primary focus … but you’re also not going to last long unless you provide great customer service for authors, too,” says Bruner.
While the Fussy Librarian is not the only game in town for book recommendations on the Web, the company tries to differentiate itself by providing more personalized recommendations to readers, he says.
“A lot of services send you a list of books. We email you a list of books that match your taste in reading.”
The Fussy Librarian breaks down book promotions into emails based on 40 genres, more than competitor BookBub, and also provides content filters for readers who don’t want to see books with profanity or sexual content, he says.
The company has tried to entice authors with competitive pricing offers. Authors pay a fee per genre, but get discounts when they promote books in more than one genre. Also, the Fussy Librarian doesn’t charge extra to promote box sets.
“Our company is privately owned, so we don’t have venture capitalists demanding a return on their investment,” says Bruner. “And we know that most authors aren’t rich, so we try to keep our prices as low as possible. The cost of living is low in Des Moines, so we don’t need to keep much for ourselves.”
How many readers see a promotion varies by the chosen genre, with anywhere from 25,000 for cookbooks to 95,000 for contemporary romance fiction, says Bruner. Readers see anywhere from three to 20 books in each email, depending on their preferences, he says.
With only one full-time and one part-time employee, the Fussy Librarian cannot read every book submitted to the site. To ensure a base-line level of quality, the website requires that books have at least 10 Amazon.com customer reviews with an average score of 4.0. If it’s a new release, the author must have a previously published book with 50 reviews on Amazon averaging 4.0.
Before starting The Fussy Librarian in 2013, Bruner worked as wire chief for Gannett’s national wire desk.
“Like a lot of people in journalism, I decided I needed a Plan B,” he explains. “I worked at the Des Moines Register and its owner, Gannett, started layoffs in 2005 whenever it decided the bottom line needed boosting. After surviving seven or eight rounds, I got tired of waking up each morning wondering if I would still have a job. I also calculated that, when adjusting for inflation, I was actually making less than when I was hired in 2000.”
At first, Bruner kept his day job at Gannett and worked on his new venture at night. Then, in October 2014, he submitted his resignation and made Fussy Librarian his full-time job.
“My only regret is I didn’t do it five years earlier,” he says.
Bruner says the service continues to evolve, with new features on the way. “We’re working on two major projects — one for readers, one for authors — over the next six months. We think they will both be innovations in the book marketing industry, so I’m reluctant to spill too many details, but they both hold tremendous potential and we’re really excited about them.”
First-person or third-person? Past or present tense? These are questions that I think about a lot as a writer.
My first novel We, The Watchedemploys first-person perspective with a present tense, but it took me a few tries on chapter one to get there. I remember trying third-person past, and then first-person past, but neither seemed to serve the story of a man who wakes up with no memory in a surveillance society.
In the end, I chose first-person because the story is about one man named Seven’s struggle to conform in a totalitarian world, and this perspective allowed me to really flesh out his internal conflict. Because Seven has no past, telling his story in present-tense felt right, too.
This POV was also great for making the reader feel like he or she was Seven. Readers come into books with no knowledge of what came before–and so did Seven. First-person present seemed the perfect way to make the reader feel like a participant in the plot.
While this perspective worked well, I decided to shake things up for the sequel, Divided We Fall.
My second novel is no longer about one character, but two. Seven learns more about who he was before the events of We, The Watched, including an important person who he left behind. I opted for third-person this time so that I could smoothly switch between the perspectives of the two protagonists and highlight their relationship.
With third-person, you can do an omniscient, narrator style where the reader sees everyone at once and can see into everyone’s head. However, since Divided We Fall is about two people, I chose to limit each scene to just one of their perspectives. I like this approach because I think it makes readers feel more invested in the story–as if the events are happening to them.
This approach actually gave me a lot more freedom to play around with time. The perspective in my first novel forced me to follow Seven even when there was not a lot of action happening. In Divided We Fall, I could jump to a different character when things got dull, and jump back when they became exciting again.
Meanwhile, choosing past tense helped reflect that Divided We Fall is very much a book about looking back and coping with how things can change.
My upcoming third novel, The Wanderer and the New West, similarly uses third-person past perspective. However, I have expanded the number of POVs to include about seven main characters. This flexibility adds an epic quality to the story and keeps action levels high.
Of course, figuring out which character’s perspective to use in a given scene or chapter is not always obvious. Sometimes one character’s voice will bring a unique flavor that another’s does not. In some cases I’ve rewritten scenes several times before finding the best voice.
So wait, two books in a row with third-person past? Does that mean I’ve decided it’s the best way to tell a story?
No way! Actually, I recently wrote a short story (coming soon) in the world of We, The Watched and I went back to first-person present. I think it came out great! The decision on which perspective to use comes down to the story. What works for one kind of book won’t necessarily work for another. Often, it’s trial and error gets me to the right angle. The important thing is to keep trying and never be afraid of rewrites!
Last month, I told you about my month of writing. With my next novel two-thirds of the way finished, I dedicated myself to writing every single day for about 25 days (not including weekends). I’m happy to report that after a fun, incredibly grueling month of writing I have indeed completed the first draft of The Wanderer and the New West.
I have a lot of editing to do before I can show it to you all, of course. But it feels great to have a beginning, middle and end down on the page. The length of the book in its current form is about 92,000 words, though I expect this to change during editing. That makes the book about 5,000 words longer than my last novel, Divided We Fall.
The Wanderer and the New West revives the western genre with a knockabout adventure set in an America with a hands-off government and minimal restrictions on guns. This America of tomorrow has returned to the ways of the Wild West, a lawless land where people make their own justice.
The Wanderer is a mysterious gunman who travels around this New West helping people wherever the train takes him. A disillusioned journalist named Rosa Veras seeks to find out why, but soon finds her own life in danger when she exposes dark truths about the gun monopoly, Breck Ammunition.
I have to say I’m really happy with it. The Wanderer has the most action I’ve ever packed into a novel, and I can’t wait to introduce you to my most colorful cast of characters yet. Like We, The Watchedand its sequel, the adventure is underpinned by political debate–this time about guns.
Okay, so I spent a month on finishing this novel. What’s next? I’ve begun the editing process, going through each chapter and making sure they’re as good as they can be. After this, I’m going to get a handful of people to read it and provide feedback. Then I’ll need a copy editor to tease out any typos. When the manuscript is completely polished, I plan to submit it to literary agents. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll move into self-publishing mode.
With any luck, I’ll have a book for you in 2016. I’d love to release it sooner, but it will depend how things go. Of course I’ll keep you updated on the process! Please subscribe to my newsletter and keep watching this blog for news.
