Tomas’s Comments (group member since Aug 22, 2020)

Tomas’s comments from the Gathering Of Dedicated Scribblers group.

M.L. wrote: "The only way we'll fail is by giving up. They'll have to pry the keyboard out of my hands."

Hell yeah!

I started revising the early draft of book three in my project. I struggled to even start - the draft is from late 2018, before I sent book one to my first betas. Thus, it's a bloody mess - almost all telling and no showing, poor dialogue structure, tons of fluff. So it was hard to just open the file and make notes about what to edit, based on the quick read-through.
Eventually, I've started. Over the last 6 days, I've edited 14 chapters (out of 62) - and while I struggle with every scene, I also can't leave it be, returning to it even when I was like 'okay, enough for today, I'll do something else'.

Had anyone of you ever felt like this when editing?

Andres wrote: "The tale of king Arthur has already been told. I don't know how you would make this interesting."

If I had a dollar for every retelling of every classic tale in existence, I'm sure it would keep me fed for quite a while.
I wouldn't let such nonsense trouble me :)

M.L. wrote: "Tomas, I'm interested in the self-publishing idea. How many people did you get to read your work before submitting it? Did you you use a professional editor?"

I've had three rounds of beta reads/swaps, each at 2-4 people, so the total is probably 10. I've done the editing myself - professional editing is, at this point, way out of my budget so I used whatever free tools were at my disposal. I was also quite lucky on thorough and kind betas who were willing to explain some mistakes I've made (and that no kind of spellcheck would catch - mostly wrong use of idioms) Some even went to the point they've given me quite some insight on the differences between UK/US/AUS English for some specific cases.

Liavali wrote: "Well done Arthur and Thomas!"

Thanks

I've reached the point of no return.
Amazon author account: created.
Tax interview: done.
The book is being processed.
I'm friggin' nervous.
Need a chocolate.

Andres wrote: "Ahk. Finger cramp..."

On the topic of health, specifically for our most-important body part, the fingers...
Anyone here with experience using compression gloves to help with cold fingers?

Andres wrote: "...we are using computers and not type writers..."
Oh, thank the hell for that. I can't imagine carrying 500+ pages of my in-progress manuscript, PER DRAFT, per book. While a full-length ebook would still fit on a floppy disc, so storing ALL the drafts takes absolutely insignificant storage space.

Spent the weekend in the hills, managed to read through 30% of the draft of my second book looking for continuity and consistency issues... there are some to fix, sure, but the weekend made me positive for getting back to writing... the next week as I have other stuff to finish before then.

Also, going to a castle ruins on a rainy day has its charm.

Okay, so I have the cover for book one done. I'm not revealing it just yet, but it's another major step done.
*relieved breath*

What you say has a point - after all, they say that the best way to promote a book is to write a sequel.
However, the usual spacing allows me to spread the cost (especially when it comes to covers). I've done a lot to reduce the gap by weaving work on the sequels between drafts of the debut, and will do my best to shorten the gaps. But publishing it also allows me to (hopefully) let it get a few reads and maybe reviews, and let me explore some of the low-cost ways to throw attention on it.
And only when the trilogy is complete, I'd think whether giving it a major push would be worth it.
For now, I'm going to spend the weekend in the hills, get some ideas, and come back refreshed in mind, even if tired in my legs. Hope you others get something done while I'm gone :)

I've eventually done and made some small edits on the first chapters of #3 just so I do something...

Have you ever been in the situation that you're chain-stuck by tasks that "wait" for one another?
Book 1 is pretty much finished, and I am delaying the final typo-hunting proofread for when I have the cover (2 weeks probably) so I can test the conversion with cover included.
I'm delaying reading the current draft of book two for the same reason - I want to read them back to back to check consistency and flow from one book to another.
And I'm not sure if poking into the early draft of #3 amidst all of that would be a good idea... but I might go for that and at least make notes what'll need to be edited because of the changes in #1 and #2 since 2018 when I made that early draft of #3...

As my focus is more on wrapping my soon-to-be-coming debut (and many hard decisions coming with it), I was happy to get to real writing today, even if all I did was to give a single scene from book two a major makeover.

Liavali wrote: "I just now lost almost three thousand words I wrote last night and this morning.

Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrereegh"

Sorry to hear this. I often hit 'save' at least three times per page, because I once lost a hundred rows in a database for my school project.

Hello everyone,
I'm not taking the course - at least not yet, as I currently focus my efforts on wrapping my soon-to-be-coming debut. But I'm always willing to talk all things fantasy (or about writing in general) so I'll be lurking around and joining the discussion when I feel like having something to say.