Ian Lewis's Blog: Ian Lewis Fiction - Posts Tagged "godspeed-carry-my-bullet"

I promised a second post on my new release, Godspeed, Carry My Bullet. There was some explaining I needed to do for why I reversed my long-held stance that I would never self-publish. So here are my excuses.

I understand there's a stigma with self-publishing, though less so these days with the advent of the eBook. The ease by which an unknown writer can get his or her work in front of readers has never been easier. This is great for those authors whose work is legitimate but may not fit the mold of whatever the print industry says is the "next big thing." The downside is that anybody can publish whatever tripe they want, which has flooded the market with less than stellar prose.

The thought that I might fall into the latter category troubled me. I was adamant that I needed to be vetted by an agent and/or publisher. That would be proof positive that I wasn't a hack. I could honestly say I'd been published.

After releasing three novellas through an independent publisher (Untreed Reads), I felt legitimized in that sense, and was looking forward to my next release.

Then I wrote a book that (in my opinion) was the best thing I'd written, the most accessible thing I'd written, and the most relevant/timely thing I'd written. I thought for sure I'd have an easier time getting it published since this book was way more conventional than my novellas. However, I couldn't find a home for it.

Given our current political climate, I felt strongly that this book should be out there. Many people are disenchanted with politics whereas others still think they should be slinging mud. And even though I usually loathe anything that's politically charged (books, music, etc.), I wanted to make my point about it using the only soapbox I have: my writing.

I rationalized that I had proved myself three times over. I could write well enough to get published, and everything after that was subjective on the part of the editor/publisher. So my qualms about writing garbage were lessened.

There was also something to be said about my motivation for writing the book in the first place. If you remember from the first post, the genesis of the story was found in a joke among co-workers. The plot details, of course, are all me, but the premise wasn't something that I considered "official Ian Lewis canon." I wrote this for fun. So why not release it for fun?

The tipping point was my discovery of pronoun.com. The site is clean, modern, and easy to use. Pronoun gets you on all of the major eBook vendors including Amazon (no KDP program), provides sales analytics, aggregates your payments through PayPal on a monthly basis, and is FREE. They don't get a cut of anything. By taking the grunt work out of file conversion, obtaining an ISBN number, coordinating with different vendors, etc., Pronoun removed any excuses I had left.

With the election season upon us, I buckled down and worked on a second round of revisions. And a third. And a fourth. In the end, I cut out approximately four thousand words, tightened the narrative, and caught what I hope were the last few mechanical issues.

Now "Godspeed, Carry My Bullet" is in the world. I consider this a "semi-professional" release, but it's my strongest effort to date. I hope you as the reader enjoy every page of it.

The more I write, the more the creative process changes. My first foray into fiction resulted in short stories for the most part. They were written organically, with simple, abstract ideas in mind. Literally, I would sit down and try to write with no outline at all. I was repulsed by the idea of approaching something creative as if it were something clinical. It needed to be pure. Three novellas and almost three novels later, I've found the outline is indispensable.
How did I get there? It was, well, organic I guess. My ideas became more complex, notably with the impetus that drove The Camaro Murders. It was high concept, yet literary and grounded, multi-character and to a certain point plot-driven. Timeline was critical because the story is told out of order.
With all that in mind, what evolved into an "outline" was hardly what I'd call an outline today. A semblance of that didn't evolve until I wrote Lady in Flames. It's continued to evolve with each release, to the point where now I typically write a paragraph for each chapter and create a cast of characters, like I did for Godspeed, Carry My Bullet and Beacon Road Bedlam.
However, it's not only the outlining process that's changed. The actual writing itself comes together in an entirely different way than before. I never used to advance past a paragraph without it being perfect, or at least what seemed perfect at that moment. This of course slowed down the writing process, sometimes to the point of me losing interest in what I was writing. So I let go a bit, realizing that moving past the thought and hammering out the story was more important. Revisiting the weaker, underdeveloped writing at a later stage, even as late as the editing process, resulted in stronger writing because you see things different with fresh eyes.
My current endeavor is another high concept story with a lot of abstract ideas that I can see clearly in my head. Because it's easy to take that for granted, It's hard not to "tell" rather than "show." So I've found myself laying out the skeleton of the story, getting the ideas out in the narrative without weaving the rich detail and evocative prose that I want to be there in the end. That will come later.
I won't lie. The writing process has become more like work than it ever has. Striving to write at professional standards demands that much, but it's the creative impulse that provides motivation for all of it. I hope you as the reader enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it.