The Writing Process of Manual Automata

Hi everybody,

If you're like me, then you're probably wondering, what's the writing process like? I knew I had no idea before I got into this all so I'll tell you, dear reader, what it's been like for me.

This is the basic outline:

1. Write
2. Edit
3. Publish

1. Writing

All of those are a bit more complicated than what they may seem. For the first one, it's a lot more than you just sitting down in front of a computer or a notebook or scratchpad with a pen and paper or, god forbid, a typewriter.

There are two main techniques for writing that can be further subdivided. You may want to consult someone about creative writing, as they'll know more. But here's how I see it: planned and unplanned. As in, write an outline, prepare your points of inflection of the plot. Most media (movies, books, comic books, etc.) will follow a 3-act structure, the one we all know. Some people will decide how long each section will be, how it's all going to figure out, whatever.

Obviously, from the way I write, you can tell I don't do that. I set myself the goal of 2,000 words a day. It can seem like a lot or a little, and I don't know if it's any better from an author's perspective. In 12th grade English, we could circumvent a lot of coursework by doing the NaNoWriMo, so, being the lazy student I am, I jumped on board. What I learned is it's about that pace that'll get you to 50,000 words in a month. Well, less, but 2,000 is a nice, round number and easier to figure out than 1,666. I'll tell you a story. At the beginning of 2017, I decided I was going to try this writing thing out, and I wanted to finish a book, all of it by the time I went back to Italy in July for two months to visit my wife's family. I started at 2,000 words a day, but I worried that I wasn't going to get done, so I started doing 4,000 to 6,000, even once 10,000. Let me tell you, that's a lot of words. 2,000 you can manage in about 2 or 3 hours if you're decently concentrated, 1.5 if you're on top of your game and know exactly what you're going to write. I worked non-stop editing and reviewing the book (with the help of my wonderful editor who volunteered to help me) for a few months, but I soon realized that what I'd produced was infeasible. I abandoned that, a book whose bits and chunks I use every day. I have a plan for how I'm going to get it all into shape, and expect the first part of it as my next book. The rest to come later.

For me, I have a beginning point and plot details in my mind. While I was writing my first book, Trump was just elected and soon to be inaugurated when I first started. For me, he influenced a lot of my thinking, and, as I said on the first of my podcasts, an author cannot write independent of their context. Well, maybe really well-researched historical fiction or whatever, but a person cannot create things without education and gender norms and culture, all of those unique to their lifetime and points of influence. For me, the biggest thing was the growing income equality. The Republicans were talking all about cutting the National Endowment for the Arts, and that really pissed me off because like hell I was going to become the next Stephen King and sell millions of books. All I want in life is to write, and I don't want to market myself, but, I'm gonna get to this later, you gotta. All I want is a solid paycheck to output work, but it ain't that easy.

I realized that what the world wants out of me is that I'm a robot. It's like the industrial-revolution-inspired schooling system. You're taught from an early age to sit around and perform the tasks you're told. I'm not complaining too much about that because, as it turns out, I'm remarkably good at that. When a class is all that, sitting for hours translating Latin poetry, figuring out integrals, filling in bubbles on a standardized test. But that doesn't make me a good human, I realized. I got accolades for it in high school and somewhat in college, but I got burned out so hard by my second year that I decided to go into Italian. But a lot of jobs want that sort of dependent thinking, do-this-so-that thought, and so it would be better if I didn't have any aspirations. If I were a robot, problem solved. It was the basis of the book, and everything else in Manual Automata is pontification based on it.

2. Editing

Okay, I told you about some of the writing process. It's just how I've always been. The first draft of anything I produce will be nigh-incomprehensible and badly worded. I power through it so I don't get disheartened and throw it all away. I think everyone goes through this, but there were no less than 10 times per book that I think 'this is all crap, I should throw this away and burn every copy of everything I've ever written. Who'd want to read this garbage? I should just sign up for Computer Science classes and try to work in an office because I suck.' And, until I make it big or famous, that will probably be true.

Anyway, this writing process of getting down one bad copy before I weasel out of it is how I've done every writing assignment in my life. So the editing process will take 3-4 times longer to complete than the act of creation. I wrote Manual Automata between July and August of 2017, and it was available to buy December 28th. And a lot of that was editing. I think the final draft was given in November of 2017 right before Thanksgiving.

The process went like this, a few days after completing the first draft (I took a break so I wouldn't have a mind still polluted by the writing process), I went through and took out the things that made me flinch the most or were internally inconsistent. The last thing, consistency, is incredibly important and hard to get. During the writing process, I'll often get an idea of what to put in a chapter that I've already written, so I'll go in an put it in. However, I don't remember if I've already discussed that point or not.

The first edit took the book down from 110k words to something like 95k. And believe me, all those removals were important.

Then I gave it to my editor, she read through it, bounced it back to me with changes. I changed it, bounced it back to her. We repeated this process like six times or something. In total, I've read my own book about a dozen or more times. Every author that you've ever read has probably done the same thing. At least. The longer the work, the more times you have to edit. It grows exponentially.

3. Publishing

So, I'm only halfway involved with the publishing part. Remind yourself, I'm an independent author, so I don't have to go through the whole querying process. I tried it for my first book that I never got through, and it sure sucks. I only got some rejection letters about six months after I submitted them! Some of them haven't reached me yet.

I spent a lot of time meditating on this whole part because, well, if I were to admit it, I hate the idea of kowtowing to someone who doesn't understand my passions or whatever. I want my books to be more or less an expression of myself. And I don't think I'll ever be a really cool artist or artiste or whatever, but I like to imagine myself similar to the people who produce the kitschy mid-west folk art. Not in theme or ideas, but they're really saying something about themselves, almost not truncated. I admire them a lot.

So the publisher I work with, we use Lulu. Then begins the not-so-wonderful part. There are a lot of things that you also have to do that have nothing to do with writing. You have to submit your book for book reviews if you want to get people to look at them. Well, nicely enough, there are a few that help you. Some of them require that the book isn't published yet (whoops, we found this out afterwards) or within 90 days of publishing, which is nice. There are some where you have to pay a decent chunk of change. It's not fun.

Well, if you want to do something more organic, there is social media. So I've had to write about 5 book descriptions and 5 bios for Goodreads, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, and the list goes on. You have to network with people. Ugh, I despair at the thought of having to be social. I signed up to be a writer so I could stay home in my underwear with a scowl on my face and ordering my wife to bring me a bowl of cheerios.

Well, I'm running out of ideas of what to write, so tell me if you have any questions, even you, at this later date who reads this years after I publish this blog post. Maybe in the year 2685, when the world's run by an intergalactic council of the big 5 publishers, you'll have a question of why anyone would defy them and not work under their umbrella. You can ask my computer-generated replica of a consciousness it.

Until next time,
Ben