David Allan Hamilton's Blog, page 7

First Draft in 19 Days

Last month, I set myself a goal of writing the first draft of The Hands Of Moaning Bones - my new Sissy Jupiter science fiction series in 4 weeks. I approached this challenge by making sure I'd done my plotting well in advance, so I knew the story and didn't have to pants it along the way. That made a huge difference.
 
The result was, I actually completed the first draft in 19 days.. just over 70,000 words under 3 weeks. So I'm thrilled with that because for me, the hardest part of writing is getting the first draft out. I love thinking about the story, characters and plotting, and I really enjoy revising--adding colour to the story and all those little nuances that keep it interesting. So being able to put the first draft down quickly is a lot of fun for me.

Now What?

With the first draft done, my next step is to perform what I call a heavy revision. I go through the story and fix all those things I need to fix (I keep a to-do list with me as I write the first draft). Things like names, inconsistencies in characters, settings, speech patterns, and so on. This can take some time, so that will be my focus for the next few weeks once I complete another project I'm working on with one of my writing clients.

And then? I'll begin plotting book 2 in the series. The question is: which series? Sissy would be fun, of course, but I've also received some good feedback from the beta readers for The Quantum Awakening, and may need to bump up the schedule for the next one there. To be determined!

Half-Way Mark in the Novel Writing Challenge

Freedom and Fast Writing

To be clear, writing quickly is not the only point. I wrap up the two week mark in my quest to write my first draft in 4 weeks, and I'm ahead of schedule. I should have it done by the end of the weekend. But fast is not the point.

Efficiency is the point.

Once you know the basics of story structure and plotting, the key to effective and producing more than one novel every two years is efficiency. You want to write consistently well, and frequently. If you write quickly and, even after revising your work sucks, that's bad. If you write slowly but your prose sings, well, that's good if your aim is to produce a novel once in a while, but no good if you're trying to make a living writing and selling books.

This is the no crap advice I offer you, and yes, it's free :)

If you want to become a good writer and sell books writing, then you need to work on your efficiency (4 or 5 novels per year?) and your effectiveness (solid prose and storytelling skills). The good news? Anyone can learn to do this. The bad news? There are no short cuts. It takes time and effort. Aim for 10,000 hours of writing and revising, then see what happens.

Day 12 of the 4 Week Writing Challenge

Yesterday's writing sessions went reasonably well (I write in 14 minute sprints), but I've had to take some additional time to tweak my plotting roadmap moving forward. I'm over half way through, and I know how the story will end and the main plot points, but the details in between were a bit fuzzy for me.

So a lot of time yesterday was spent just thinking about Sissy Jupiter's story, along with a bunch of writing sprints. The next week will prove interesting as I have some other business and projects to attend to and my writing time may be a bit squeezed. But we shall see!

But how about you? Writing in sprints and focusing on getting the first draft done warts and all isn't for everyone. But if you've tried it and have some thoughts on it, I'd love to hear from you!

4 Week First Draft Update

It's Monday and a brand new work week, although my writing week actually runs from Friday to Thursday. It's a math, time travel thing!

So I wrote about 2500 words on Saturday and, as is my custom, took Sunday off to do other things. I'm just over half way through the first draft of Book 1 in my new Sissy Jupiter space opera series, and I'm enjoying the process so far.

Some ask me about the quality of the writing and my answer is honest. Because I'm writing to get the story out, I don't stop to check spelling or whether I've used the same word over and over, like I used to do. That just slows me down. But it does mean that the first revision - the heavy revision where I check for inconsistencies and grammar and pronoun use and all those other wonderful things - will take longer.

That's okay because my logic, such as it is, suggests that I'd rather spend the time fixing things once I feel I have found the story. I'd hate to go through the effort of revising as I write, because if I have to cut out whole sections or rewrite them entirely, then that's wasted effort. So I want to get the story out first, warts and all. Then, make sure it's the story I want to tell. And then, when I pretty much have the story down, I'll do the heavy revision.

I'm a few days ahead of schedule in my writing goal of 4 weeks, which is great because I have other work that needs to get done! But then I hope to spend another 4 weeks with my revisions and edits and adding in some colour and nuance to the story. Then, once I have the beta version done, I'll send it to select readers for feedback.

If all goes according to plan - and that's a big "IF" - I should be able to write, polish and publish a book in the Sissy Jupiter series in 3-4 months. That's the goal: 3 - 4 books in the series in a year.

Oh, Those Blurbs...And The Daily Challenge Update

This week in the writing workshops, we discussed the importance of the back cover blurb, what it's supposed to do, and how we can write them effectively. Let's have a look.

Make no mistake, the blurb is the second most important marketing tool you have (your cover is the first). When someone picks up your book, or these days, clicks on your cover link, they are introduced to the back cover blurb. This is part of the negotiation between you the storyteller, and the reader. The blurb will introduce the major thrust of the story while enticing the reader to purchase to find out more. If the reader puts your book back on the shelf, it usually means they're not the right audience for your book (which is fine, by the way), or, your blurb sucks and failed to entice the reader enough to make the purchase.

So what is  blurb?
I can tell you what it's not: the blurb is not a synopsis or summary of your story. Too often, this is what I see. No, the blurb is a well-written 100-200 word outline of who the main character is, what they're after, who's stopping them, and what are the consequences if they fail. This is often followed by a Call To Action, like "pick up your copy of XXX today".

That's the template. Check out any book that sells a lot, and you will see a blurb that accomplishes those four items above.

You can see the blurb I put together for The Quantum Awakening right here. Don't just read it: study it. Notice how I'm enticing the reader to step into my world without giving the plot away.

Take it, change my words with your own. Write an awesome blurb.

Meanwhile, the challenge to write the first draft of my Sissy Jupiter series in 4 weeks is progressing well. Another day yesterday with over 6,000 words, and that despite my regular coaching and writing business activities. Don't think I'll be able to keep up that pace, but let's see!

Quest For Efficient Writing

One of the more interesting aspects of novel writing is discovering what works for you. My first novel, The Crying of Ross 128, took about 2.5 months to write the first draft. The next two books in the trilogy took much longer, probably because i was trying too hard and shackling the muse in the process. The Quantum Awakening, coming out in April, took less time for the first draft as I learned to write more efficiently in sprints.

Each of us is different. Some write slowly; others quickly. Some writer better prose in the first draft; others focus on getting the story out and fixing it up later.

The key to efficient writing is finding what works best for you. By efficient I mean getting words down while maintaining the bones of a good story so that you can minimize the heavy revisions later.

Efficient, and effective. That's the goal. For me, I'm now able to write 5,000 good words per day. Yes, there is still revising and editing to perform, but the quality of the initial writing is improving. That didn't happen quickly. That's come about after writing over half a million words in novels. No short cuts.

Perhaps, then, rather than comparing our writing with someone else's, we focus on what we can do where we are, knowing that with more experience and persistence, we'll develop into efficient writers too.

One Week In - 4 Week First Draft Challenge

Yesterday (March 24, 2021) marked the one week in milestone in the writing of the first draft of my new Sissy Jupiter adventure, tentatively titled "The Hands of Moaning Bones". The last few days have been extremely productive, as the numbers bear out. I write in 14 minute sprints throughout the day and in between other activities needed for my writing and teaching business.

I've learned a lot so far. The most interesting take away from this first week is how many fascinating little nuanced plot lines appear while I write. This was not unexpected, since that's the way the creative process goes, but what surprised me was how many and the quality of the ideas. Did not anticipate that at all.

Of course, some of these may only appear brilliant to me at this moment. Thank goodness there are multiple revisions to undertake before the story ever sees the light of day, because sometimes when it comes to writing, I can't trust my own judgment as to what works and what fails miserably.

Today, I plan to write another 5000 words or so and keep at it. At this rate, I will meet the challenge, but it's still early in the game and anything (life?) can happen.

4 Week First Draft - Daily Update And Random Thoughts

Yesterday's writing progressed well. Again, what I do is write in sprints, usually 14 or 15 minutes at a time. I can write 1100 words in 28 minutes, so I try to stick to 14 minute sprints.

Make no mistake, this is first draft copy. Like Hemingway said, it's sh!t and, yeah, I can confirm that. But what I find totally surprising is the ideas that spring forth while I put the crap down. I've now developed a wicked subplot for my main character, Sissy, and and intriguing surprise that will be foisted on her later in the story :)

This is me tenting my fingers in anticipation...

It's clear as I write this novel that I'm getting faster at putting words down. When I think back to that first novel (the one that shall never see the light of day) and my other first novel that I actually published, I'm reminded of the painstaking effort it took to write. I see this too with my novel workshop writers... they struggle over every word in the first draft.

I suppose it comes down to developing an effective mindset to writing 5,000 words or more per day... one that doesn't fuss about spelling or punctuation or even the best way to weave a line. That heavier work comes after the first draft is done, and that's how I wrote The Quantum Awakening once the first draft was completed.

Truth is, we must all find what works for us. And I'm thrilled I've learned how to write quickly, with a story that has been well-planned (even though it morphs along the way).

​What works for you?

4 Week First Draft - Day 5 Update

I challenged myself to write the first draft of my new novel series in four weeks. But I didn't start the challenge until I'd already started writing. Fortunately, I hadn't gone very far, and with some extra time to write these days, I thought I'd best get to it.

Yesterday, Day 5, was a productive day. I wrote just under 7,000 words and I'm half way through the Beginning sections.

The novel plan is divided into 60 sections: 15 in the Beginning, 30 in the Middle, and 15 in the End. You'll sometimes see me refer to sections by number, e.g., B9 is the 9th section in the Beginning group.

How I write
I plot the story out before I ever start writing, so I know where my major plot points are, and I build in what happens in each of those sections. Yes, the plot morphs as I write and the characters take on lives of their own, but this plan frees me up to "just write".

I write in 15 minute sprints. Before setting the timer, I review the section and play out in my mind where my characters need to go and do, then I go. When I'm writing under the clock, I don't stop to revise or edit along the way, so the first draft looks sketchy with missing punctuation, spelling mistakes, and so on. I don't care. My goal is to get the first draft done. It'll get revised several times before it's finished anyway, so I just write.

When the 15 minutes is up. I end the sentence I'm working on and then go do something else for a few minutes before returning to the story.

This way, I average 580 words in each 15 minute sprint. Two sprints gives me between 1100 and 1200 words. That results in a novel of about 65,000 - 75,000 words after revisions - a good length for my readers.

Now, I didn't begin writing like this. For the Ross 128 Trilogy, I'd write about 1250 words in 1:15 hours. Yes, I revised along the way and fixed up the punctuation and such, so it was a much slower process. But I wrote The Quantum Awakening (coming out in April) with sprints, and the first draft flew by. So I'm trying this with my new Sissy Jupiter series. It may not work. And that's okay.

Today's goal: Write another 3 sections, about 3500 words.

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