I Heard From Laurie the Editor!

My editor, Laurie, was kind enough to send me a short email halfway through her edit of Redemption on the River.  I had to unplug my laptop and take it downstairs to my wife so we could read it together for the first time.  And.....she had nice things to say.

Actually, even nicer than her comments was the fact that she took the time to let me know how it was going.  She normally doesn't send progress reports, but she had somehow sensed from 3,000 miles away how anxious I was and gave me some early feedback.

Whew.  I took some of that just-released pent-up energy and went out for a 38 degree bike ride.  (OBTW, only 22 miles left to go to reach my goal of 1,000 miles for 2011.)

Speaking of pent-up energy, I've already warned Teri that once Laurie's report arrives there is going to be nothing else I'd rather be working on than the book.

It's Tough Waiting - Meanwhile

I'm in the queue for the editor I picked to begin work on REDEMPTION ON THE RIVER; she told me she expects to begin working on it in November.  In the meantime, I've been doing a number of things.

First, I entered a contest at Red Adept Reviews, namely their Worst Ending to a Novel contest.  I'm proud (?) to report that my entry in the horror genre garnered second place, and my entry in the Romance Category earned a fourth.  That and $5 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks, but it was fun.

Second, I've been editing an old short story of mine called IAN'S MINE, which is encouraging from the fact that it appears, at least to me, that my writing is much improved from when I wrote it.  I may offer it up for free if & when REDEMPTION ON THE RIVER launches.

Third,  I've been toying with a new novel concept.  With a working title of KANSAS, it will be set in—wait for it—Kansas, in the 1850's.  It's a very dynamic and bloody period in US history and I have the two main characters in my head, but no semblance of a plot as yet.  I have vague ideas, but thus far they take up less than a page in my Moleskine notebook.  Inspiration has yet to strike in a major way.

I think a big reason for lack of motivation for Novel #2 is the hiatus that REDEMPTION ON THE RIVER is currently in.  Laurie Rosin, my editor, advised me to not begin another book as she wishes me to save all my creative energy for rewriting RotR once her edit is finished and returned to me.  She also tells me to only look at Redemption when I want to, as opposed to when I feel like I must, and this is resulting in a very spotty self-edit of version 10.3.  It also causes guilt when I consider Kansas.

Sigh.  As the title of this post states— it's tough waiting.

Here's a picture of the sunrise that I took yesterday from the cockpit on descent into Miami after an all-nighter from Seattle:

The Impotence of Proofreading

As posted earlier I've hired an editor, but Laurie is a developmental editor who I hope and expect will do great things to improve my book in terms of the telling-of-the-tale.  She's not a proofreader, which I expect to need once I've produced my best self-polished revision based on Laurie's inputs.

As I understand it, a poofreader is a poison who catches catches misteaks in a banuscript.

So, without further ado, a YouTube video that I discovered via a KindleBoards Author's Cafe post, The Impotence of Proofreading:

I Have Written a Book - and Hired an Editor

When I started this project my goal was to write a novel. Furthermore, I told myself that I couldn't say "I've written a book" until I had not only written a first draft, but had made the book as good as I could make it. At long last, longer than I care to recall, I've reached that point. After ten drafts the manuscript is as good as I can make it. I've written a novel.

The trouble is, the book can be and needs to be better. I know it can be improved but can't figure out how to do it. I've been over it so many times the words are wearing grooves in my brain.

My daughter recently finished reading it for the second time and said, "Dad, it's really good, but it's not ready to be published. It's like a car with a manual transmission instead of an automatic." My wife just finished her third read and says that the second half is great, but the first half doesn't measure up to the second.

I need an editor. A good editor. No, a great editor.

I researched editors at Preditors and Editors and made a list of about a dozen, then culled it to four finalists. Three offered various levels of editing, from proofreading on up, as well as 'sample edits' of the first chapter. I received two sample edits and estimates for the whole 156K manuscript in the neighborhood $2500.

Whew. Am I that committed to my book and my writing?

Evidently I am, because after much thought and email discussions, I committed to the fourth editor and her substantially higher fee (which I won't disclose). Laurie Rosin impressed the hell out of me with her track record (she has edited 38 national best sellers), experience with historical fiction, confidence in herself and her service, and way of challenging me to be serious about writing.

Throughout this whole project - though the hot and cold spells, the breaks, the highs and lows - I've told myself repeatedly to do the best job I could. Right now, that means sucking it up and going with the best editor I could find. The best, for me, is Laurie, and she tells me she'll get to my project this fall.

I'm really looking forward to working with her.

The $50 First Chapter Flogging

The reviews from beta readers have been almost uniformly stellar, but it is sometimes hard to extract constructive criticism. I suppose it's a good thing that many of them say, "No, I have no suggestions to make, I just loved it", but I'm very aware that the manuscript still needs improvement.

One friend (thanks RL) did do an edit with red pen in hand and she caught a number of things which made me wonder if I am blind, but that's not going to produce the same results as a thorough review by a professional editor. So I paid to get flogged.

Ray Rhamey at Flogging the Quill offers a variety of editing services, from free 'floggings' of reader-submitted first pages clear on up to complete book edits. I popped for his $50 edit of a book's first chapter. Off it went, and he returned it to my inbox in about 10 days.

First, Ray does a thorough job and his $50 flogging is well worth it, particularly if you've never had your manuscript looked at by a pro before. He returned 60+ individual edits and comments, as well as a summary overview of thoughts and suggestions.

Second.......... Holy crap. Looking at the trees rather than the forest for the moment, I had thought that Chapter 1 was relatively clean. Wrong. It's covered in green with erased adverbs, inserted commas, struck-out adjectives, etc. Sigh. I particularly appreciated his finding potential point of view (POV) errors, something I haven't been watching for closely enough because it's pretty easy to err that way when writing in first person.

The forest: In Ray's FWIW (his signature line) opinion the opening, indeed the whole first chapter, is too slow. He finds not enough story tension, conflict, and sense of plot. Not enough hook early enough. Hmm.

His major point, and it's supported by numerous blogging agents, is that you must hook an agent's - or a reader's - interest no later than the first page or you're done, you've lost them.

I returned (in an email exchange) that there are plenty of fine novels that start slowly. He granted that, but allowed as how those are almost always by established authors who can, so to speak, get away with it because agents, publishers, and readers will give them the benefit of the doubt and persist through a slow opening.

I'm thinking that may well be true, but I'm primarily concerned with writing the best book I can, not necessarily the book that will best appeal to an agent reading the first page.

Furthermore, although I have had beta readers comment that the opening is slow, when I did cut about 1/3 of the first chapter to open it in the afternoon rather than morning of the first day, some beta readers complained, saying, "Oh, I loved the opening and being eased into the story, you should have kept it."

Sigh. What are you gonna do?

Yet Another Edit Complete

The current hard copy of the project is 9.0, which is in accordance of the software version type of numbering scheme I've been using. I just finished another complete red-pen edit of the manuscript.

What is amazing to me is the number of times I can go through this thing and still miss such obvious things as missing words, doubled words, misplaced words, grammar mistakes, punctuation, etc. I estimate that I've been through the whole book from start to finish, on the laptop or on hard copy, in editing mode at least twenty times and I still find errors.

And that's not even to talk about the things that I'm really trying to find and improve. Such things as awkward phrases, clichés, redundancies, characters who enter a room they never left, and just plain trying to make the writing itself better.

Sigh.