Writing Has Taught Me to Keep Looking Forward
It’s funny how easy it is to “rest on our laurels”, so to speak. Once we accomplish something, we can be tempted to relax and take it easy for a while. But if we do that, we’re never going to get anywhere–or at least not as quickly as we could/should!
I JUST launched The Last Bucelarii (Book 1): Blade of the Destroyer three weeks ago. After months of hard work and waiting, it was finally done and here. Big launch party, lots of sales, hurrah for me!
But do you know what else I just did? On Friday, I just submitted the final draft of Book 2 to my publisher. All the time that I was setting up the book launch for Book 1, I was working on Book 2. Now that Book 1 is launched and trucking along, I’m setting up the launch for Book 2.
And don’t think for a minute that I’m done! Starting next week, I’m going to get back to work on Book 3. The story is fully written (in a rough draft), and alpha readers have done their thing. Now it’s time to take their comments, fix up the book, and write that first draft to send off to beta readers. It’s about two months or so of hard work!
What’s going to happen while Book 3 is with beta readers? By the gods, I’m going to work on writing the rough draft of Book 4 to send to my alpha readers, so that when Book 3 is off to the publishers (sometime in early to mid 2016),I’ll be able to start working on Book 4.
That may seem like a dizzying amount of work in advance, but it pays off! Only by doing all this hard work in advance will I be able to keep up a steady rhythm of publishing a top-quality, professionally-edited, reading-worthy novel every 6 to 9 months. I’ll always have something written and ready to work on, and I’ll always be making progress.
Writing has helped me to keep looking forward to the “next thing”, and it’s going to keep me working well into my later years! I’ll be pumping out novels at a regular pace simply because I’m always finished projects and working on the next–never waiting or being content with my current “success”.
This is an attitude that (I hope) will permeate into the rest of my life. It’s hard to keep going from one thing to the next, but it’s the best way to keep making progress as a parent, a spouse, and a person. The moment I get complacent with my progress in any area of my life, I tend to stall or slow down. The only way that I can keep moving forward and making any sort of progress or growth as a person is to keep moving and keep looking forward!
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The creative urge within us all is too strong for torpor. Whenever we relax too much, there's always that inner force telling us to keep creating. That inner force won't give us any peace until the end of our lives. As authors, we constantly give in to the "creative urge" as I call it, so complacency is not an issue. I just have one question for you, my dear friend: what's the difference between an alpha reader and a beta reader?
Alpha reader reads the rough draft of the story and makes comments on the plot, characters, and overall story line. Beta readers do so as well, but they get a more finished version of the product.Alpha readers are the first line of feedback, the people you can trust to help you craft a quality story. Beta readers are more about putting the proper finishing touches!
