Skye Lansing's Blog, page 4

1st Draft Done, Revisions Begin

Today I finished the 1st Draft of my book and have started on the major revisions I decided needed to be done in service to the story.

If you look at my progress graph you’ll see that I am already 32% done, however this is misleading as I was casually working on this already and I track my progress by how many chapters are “done.” In this case the work is not evenly distributed between chapters (a few scenes and even chapters need something approaching a total rewrite, while others need significant work but nothing so serious that I cannot rework what is already there).

By my estimation, most of the “heavy” work is contained to five or six chapters. No deadline yet because I want to attempt tackling at least one of these to see how long it takes before I make any estimations.

By Duty Bound, progress update

It has been a long time since I posted here, so it seemed a good time for an update on my book’s progress! More below the fold!

Cover Art Commissioned

This is something I’ve wanted to get in on ever since I finished writing, however between figuring out what the title would be, what I wanted the image to be, and waiting for the artist to open for commissions, my first chance ended up being this Saturday.

Luckily I was on the ball as my preferred artist’s commission slots filled up in only four hours! Great news for her, and it made me very glad I had set my phone to pester me all day to make sure I didn’t miss the opening announcement.

The artist in question is Johis, and is the one responsible for my first book cover (which came out amazingly IMO). We have already spoken a bit about what I am looking for with this cover, and I must say I am very excited to be working with her once more. I cannot wait to see what she comes up with this time. For examples of her art check out my first book In Honor’s Shadow, or visit her personal webpage HERE. 

Editing Progress

I’ve made regular progress with editing, and have the first pass roughly 70% now (with 17 of 25 chapters edited).

The next pass will be focusing on the bigger problems I discovered during this one, as well as some tweaking of different plot lines. The majority of these changes take place after CH8, however, and is mostly contained to a few parts that need a large amount of love. Once that second pass is finished (which I hope will not take more than a month or two) I shall put my book out to the first round of beta readers, followed by more editing before I go looking for a second round of beta readers.

Back in the Swing

Recently started making progress again!

I’ve had quite a few thoughts about getting back into work. Keeping up this blog, editing, and writing are things that I know I was doing all at the same time prior to my grandmother’s death, so re-learning how to balance all of it is an interesting experience.

There are a lot of thoughts I’ve had as a result of everything that’s gone on in the past few months (I figure that is pretty much unavoidable when a family member passes away). Nothing that I would consider unique by any means. Mostly I was taken by surprise by how hard I took it, especially since I felt like I was ready for when this happened. On top of that what I felt was so delayed that at first I didn’t realize it was connected.

In any case, I’ve been plowing back into work again, and gradually adding more on top of it as I feel able to take it on.

Updates

So progress on my editing came to a screeching halt March and now that everything is resolved I feel it is time I addressed why.

My maternal grandmother has been sick for some time (this is something I have spoken about in my newsletters several times). Long story short she has battled a very aggressive cancer. During March her health took a turn for the worse and she was put on oxygen. Shortly after that proved insufficient and she had to be taken to the hospital and put on life support to be kept alive. While she was able to regain consciousness she ultimately decided that she was not willing to live with a tube down her throat, so she had it removed after making it clear that she did not want to be resuscitated should her vitals fail.

I am happy to say that most of her family was able to travel down there to be with her when they removed the tube, although unfortunately circumstances meant I was not and resorted to calling her. When the tube was removed she passed very rapidly.

There really isn’t much I can say. This is something I have known was coming for 3 years now, but in the end it happened so quickly. With how long I had to prepare for this it still surprises me how much it hurts sometimes when I think about how she is finally gone, but by the same token there is this sense of relief too. Not a joyful sort, but just this feeling of closure and the knowledge that my grandmother was in the enviable position to pick her own time, and to have everyone she loved around her during that moment.

Obviously I have not been in a mental state where I felt comfortable working on my book (or anything else for that matter), but now that everything is done and I am home I hope to resume work. My timeline will likely be pushed back some although for now I just want a moment to pick up the pieces.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

-Robert Frost

Cthulhu and Friends

This Christmas I got a B&N gift card, and finally got around to heading to their store to figure out what I wanted to buy. I don’t actually mind getting gift cards although there are certainly ones I prefer (Amazon gift cards tend to get used immediately as I read a lot on my Kindle). While none of the stuff I actually wanted was at B&N, I did end up picking up one book more or less on principle.

To my embarrassment I’ve never read any of Lovecraft’s stories despite knowing many details about his fiction and being able to recognize the influence he’s had on the horror genre. Well I found a large book that is an annotated collection. While writing horror isn’t really my thing, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to expose myself to something new.

Reviewing Has Begun

As of the first of this month I am now reviewing my book. Plan to handle one chapter a day (a pace I know I can easily maintain) so this should be done sometime before the end of the month. Once I reach that point I plan to immediately dive into my first revision. The good news is that so far I don’t have that many things to fix (I think, after the first revision my early beta readers may throw up a host of complaints). You can track my progress on the little widget to the right.

Speaking of, soon I plan to be adding a second project to that widget, one for the novella I’m writing. Currently I am still projecting it to be around 50,000 words, but as I realized my entire first act was wrong I’m no longer completely sure that is the case. We will have to see. If necessary I’ll adjust the estimate once I have a better feel for the project’s scope.

Brief Update

I’ve decided to take a break from following social media for several weeks (which I realize is probably amusing considering how I barely use it as is). Although I rarely post anything to social media—specifically twitter—it is something that I do use to follow certain authors, editors, and publishers that work mostly in my genre so I have an idea of what is going on “in the industry” as it were.

As you might imagine that isn’t what most people are talking about now, and it is causing me enough distraction that it is getting in the way of my ability to write (putting it in the most mild way possible).

In more positive news, I’m starting to feel the itch to start editing Book 2 now, which is perfect. The first step to that is re-reading the thing and taking notes on what changes need to be made. I must admit I am half excited and half frightened by the prospect of looking at my writing with fresh eyes.

Moving Forward

With the end of 2016 I found myself with a few loose ends to tie up, something that I spent all of this month working on until this point. Now that everything is behind me and I have a chance to take stock and catch my breath I find myself at one of those points in life where I can just sit and reflect.

To be perfectly honest this is a very comfortable spot to be. It is easy to fall into the belief that there is nothing making demands of me, even though I know that come February I need to begin reviewing and revising my second book. There is a peace that comes from having everything in order, and being able to consider all my projects with the realization that they are complete (for the moment anyway). Now I can sit, and just enjoy peace as I let my thoughts roam where they will without having to worry about how I am going to write that next paragraph, or scene, or section, or chapter.

But even as I sit here there is this feeling in the very back of my mind, just gnawing at my thoughts. At first it is easy to ignore, but as time goes on it becomes more and more irritating. Before long I’ll even begin to feel guilty that I haven’t started work on something new.

It would be nice if I could tell you that this was something romantic like a life philosophy. “You cannot sit idle for too long because that way leads to stagnation. You just can’t do it.” In reality it isn’t anything so carefully thought out. I can’t even call it a drive. It is more of a compulsion, one earned after sitting idle for years with no change until I was nearly bored to tears.

So even now I can feel it will be time to press on before long. I know where I am now, and while it isn’t terrible I know it isn’t where I want to be. I honestly can’t tell where my current path will bring me. Sometimes that frightens me. Sometimes it leaves me filled with doubt. Still, that is a far better than suffering the discomfort that comes to me when I stay still.

Goodbye 2016, Hello 2017

So with the end of the year it is time for all sorts of reflection. I literally just got back from traveling YESTERDAY (and thankfully am not going to be away from home for months on end), so I haven’t had an opportunity to really update this blog in over a week. That means I should probably look at this webpage again and simply make sure everything is up to date, that my links all work, and just do basic maintenance.

In the meantime, how about I look back and see how I did with last year’s resolutions, and come up with new ones for 2017?

2016 Resolution Progress

For 2016 I had a total of 5 resolutions involved with my writing.

Launch In Honor’s Shadow before March.

Completed. Ended up getting the book out the door right at the end of February. That means I was really down to the wire on it. In retrospect I probably should have given myself a little more time so I wasn’t scrambling so hard at the last-minute.
Keep my webpage updated.

Mostly Successful. Because of the move there were points where I didn’t update on time, or just skipped updates entirely. Don’t think there is much to complain about here.
Finish writing my 2nd book.

Successful, barely. I intended to have this book written by the end of July, but only got it done mid-December (again, thanks to the move). So that is 5 months late, but in the end I managed.
Be ready for NaNoWriMo.

Depending on how you measure “ready” I arguably succeeded, however I count this as a failure. I had a novella ready to be written, but because the move messed everything up I decided it was way more important to finish my 2nd book…which then ran long.
Write at least 1,000 words/day, 6 days a week.

Successful, and how. Just on my book I wrote nearly 130,000 words. On a second side “just for fun” project I took up while moving I managed 186,000 words. Then there is a short story I wrote over the course of 24 hours that was 13,000 words. That is nearly 330,000 words, and I haven’t gotten to these blog posts or my newsletter, or my editing (which I decided to count at 1/2 the rate of writing). For reference, I was only supposed to do 312,000 at minimum. I feel like I am safe on this one.

So, when all is said and done I managed 4 out of 5 of my resolutions, at least where it pertains to writing. That isn’t too shabby I think.

Resolutions for 2017

With the move behind me, and looking back on everything I managed last year, I feel like it is only reasonable for me to set my sights just as high this year. To that end I am going to lay out the following goals for 2017:

Launch Book #2 of my Honor’s Path series before the end of the year.

The book is written, and I would really like to get it fully edited and released by December if possible. That means I’ll need to revise, edit, proofread, and format it. I also need to decide on a title and get cover art made. Fortunately, now that I know the process, I shouldn’t have as much trouble as I did with In Honor’s Shadow.
Write that Novella I had intended for NaNoWriMo.

This should be easily as I don’t expect this will be any longer than 60,000 words. A month or two of writing at most. If possible, it would be nice to also get this published this year. That isn’t something I am going to push TOO hard though. I’ll be happy if I get it written, although publishing it and getting 2 books out the door this year would be a nice bonus.
Start writing, and finish, Book #3 of my Honor’s Path Series.

After my first goal, this is probably the second most important one. My overall business goal is to have at least 1 book launch every year. That is ambitious, but I think it is necessary to get a catalog built up ASAP. More books is more chances for exposure, which hopefully means more sales (and makes any advertising I do more effective).
Be more consistent with my Newsletter.

One problem I’ve constantly encountered with my newsletter is that I’m getting it out later than I would like. That needs to stop. Part of the issue is that I never feel like I have anything to say, which in turn comes back to my putting it off to the last moment. Really bad habit and IMO disrespectful to everyone who has bothered to sign up. I need to stop slacking off here.
Write at least 1,000 words/day, 6 days a week.

Related to my goals of getting books out, I naturally need to write a bunch. I know this isn’t any higher than last year’s goal, but it feels a bit right to me. While I often write more in a day, this allows me to take time off from time to time so it feels like a good work/life balance even if I am always busting my butt to get more written. So long as I meet this measure I can say that I haven’t been slacking off.

With that out-of-the-way, I wish everyone a Happy New Year and hope that you have had (or are in the process of having) an enjoyable holiday season!

Honor’s Path (Book 2) Officially Written!

Only a few days late, but just north of 8,000 words longer than I expected. I will not jump immediately into editing, but this should put me on target for publishing it sometime next year (again, I am going to shoot for November or December). Don’t have time for a longer post now, but there should be one the Monday following Christmas. I ought to have a lot to talk about then.