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Do you come to a point when you hate reading your own book?
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3 yrs.i've been on hiatus since September working on its cover and other short fiction.
Usually it's somewhere during the second reading. Not so much that I don't enjoy it, but I'm so familiar with it that my eyes kind of gloss over the text. I'll get through several pages before it hits me that I didn't actually look at the text, but read through it almost from memory. It's why with later readings, I break it up and read the piece out of order.My current project is an ambitious epic targeted to run about 1000 pages/ 300k words, and I'm not looking forward reading and rereading it. Fortunately, I've been able to use the periods where I hit the creative wall as an excuse to edit what I have to those points, so that when the whole thing is complete, hopefully most of the problems will already be worked out and I don't have to spend as much time as I otherwise would have.
J.J. wrote: "Usually it's somewhere during the second reading. Not so much that I don't enjoy it, but I'm so familiar with it that my eyes kind of gloss over the text. I'll get through several pages before it h..."That happens to me too... flying through the pages because I know it by heart and missing what is actually written.
I never thought about reading it out of order! I'll have to try it!
Sometimes when I reread my work I break it up with reading other things in between. One day (or week) I will read a book for pleasure and then I'll go back to my work.
In my case, yes, I read and reread while editing, and do it many times, but I do not do it for enjoyment. I regard it as necessary work, and do so many pages a day. And yes, it is something of a nightmare, but it has to be done. What worries me the most is that the first draft is often written with quite a lot that needs editing, but this is the version where I am feeling inspired. By the last edit, I am often wondering whether changes are going to lose that feeling, or have already lost them. Accordingly, after structural edits, I try to restrict myself to only changing for grammar and typos, and not touch the overall structure. Sometimes I don't manage to do that though.
Alex G wrote: "3 yrs.i've been on hiatus since September working on its cover and other short fiction."
Hope to see it released some time soon!
J.J. wrote: "Usually it's somewhere during the second reading. Not so much that I don't enjoy it, but I'm so familiar with it that my eyes kind of gloss over the text. I'll get through several pages before it h..."Wow, 300k words, J.J.! Do you plan to release it as one book or break it into series, because it's easily 4-5 books there?
Yelena wrote: "I break it up with reading other things in between. One day (or week) I will read a book for pleasure and then I'll go back to my work...."I kinda like things finished, so I try to concentrate and accomplish it before switching to anything else, incl. recreational reading
Ian wrote: "In my case, yes, I read and reread while editing, and do it many times, but I do not do it for enjoyment. I regard it as necessary work, and do so many pages a day. And yes, it is something of a ni..."Yep, feels and tastes like work -:)
Nik wrote: "J.J. wrote: "Usually it's somewhere during the second reading. Not so much that I don't enjoy it, but I'm so familiar with it that my eyes kind of gloss over the text. I'll get through several page..."I plan to release it as one piece. I did the series thing with my last project and was disenchanted with the whole concept. It became more serialized than I wished, some of the pieces that needed to be more transitional to the over all arc than action packed felt forced when I had to give those parts some "hook" leading to a climax within that part, and I almost become a slave to the length of each part, forcing each individual story to unfold in about the same number of words/pages.
By putting it out as a single book, I can let it unfold as feels natural. Each part is as long as it needs to be. If one comes up unreasonably short, that's fine because I don't have to worry about someone getting "ripped off" by such a small piece. I can spend hundreds of pages on world building without having action heavy moments intruding just to keep the tone of each piece uniform.
I actually do have an idea for a sequel and will leave a few elements standing to provide characters and premises for the sequel, but because this epic will be a complete arc, I can do something else next so the next part won't be forced when I suffer burn-out from working withe the same ideas for so long. I can leave the sequel on the back burner and take it up in the future when that universe feels fresh again.
300k is roughly the magnitude of The Complete Amber Chronicles of Zelazny. It's probably cool for a reader, immersed in the world you create, to spend more time there. On the other hand, not every reader would embark such a long journey, unless he/she's already a fan of yours and knows what s/he's into.. Just random thoughts.From your, writer's point of view, I can understand the resentment of artificiality in the unnatural serialization.
It's definitely a feat and good luck with it!
300k is impressive! Mine hover around 45k words each which is about all my attention span can handle at this point.
Marie wrote: "300k is impressive! Mine hover around 45k words each which is about all my attention span can handle at this point."300 k might look impressive, but does it inhibit sales? My "Miranda's Demons" comes in at over 300k, and was written as my effort at a "War and Peace" only with aliens, and while I think (biased!) that it is one of my better works, the length seems to put off sales.
Not only do I expect it won't be for everyone, but I would expect the negative reviews to come in from people that think all 300k words should be action-packed."OMG 400pages before something happens!!!"
I'm expecting it to appeal more to those who binge an entire series. The one full series I finished in January didn't get much attention until the last book was out. The full omnibus comes in at 317k words and is doing all right.
I was looking through the 1-star reviews for Hugh Howey's Wool omnibus the other day and thought it funny so many people hated it because he spends so much time describing stairs. The people who love his work, loved it for the world building, so I know there are fans out there to appeal to.
J.J. wrote: "Not only do I expect it won't be for everyone, but I would expect the negative reviews to come in from people that think all 300k words should be action-packed."OMG 400pages before something happ..."
Of course all 300k should not be action packed, but my approach was to make sure something is always happening, even if sometimes it is people waiting for the opposition to do something. I think action has to be paced, in the same way as in music you can't be at a climax all the time - if you try all it does is seem loud. Same with writing - a constant frenetic pace merely leaves the reader dazed, or looking for something else. The trick is to make the "quiet patches" interesting. That is why it is useful to have subplots that at first sight appear unrelated to the main story, but eventually are tied in.
It is actually a normal phase of writing. You NEED to get to this point to know you have made it as good as you can unassisted. This is the stage when you send it out to beta readers and get feedback.
On the topic matter - yes I sometimes do - normally on the nth edit.I now put it away and look at it after a few weeks.
One tip which I agree with - use text to speech for a run through - i know it can be clunky but it does highlight some phrasing and editing problems.
He fell to his knees, clutching the book to his chest as a pair of hot tears rolled down his cheeks, and cried out, "I love my book!":-)
A little bit, but I find it kinda fun too! There's lots of times where I've discovered minor errors like misspellings and stuff like that I didn't catch the first time I went through it, and that's really fun to me. Although when it's super long it can get pretty exhausting to do in one sitting.
My experience: I'm going through it right now with my last book. I'm working on the layout now. And I know I should read it once more to get it right for the printer. But I just don't want to. When get this attitude toward my books, I just stop. After a month of limbo, I go back to it with fresh eyes. Sometimes this works. Good luck everybody...Tchuess.
The one I am not looking forward to is I have to put out a second edition of "Planetary Formation and Biogenesis". This contains a review of the scientific information up to about 2011, and then an analysis and, having concluded the standard theory is unlikely to be correct, I formulated my theory. Since then I have collected about another hundred references, and many of those show that some of the early ones I considered to be wrong, and I sent a lot of time showing why, are in fact wrong. That means the structure of the book is now wrong, and it is about 300,000 words already.On the good side, last Thursday two papers came out in Nature that show the standard theory is false, and as far as I can make out, mine is the only one left in play - and hardly anyone knows about it. I need to make it easier to get to.
Ian wrote: "mine is the only one left in play - and hardly anyone knows about it..."That truly sounds legacy! Good luck with revising and accomplishing it, Ian
Just happened to me. Read through the first draft of Part One of my third thriller, and wondered why am I bothering with fiction with all that is going on around me? In the face of what is definitely NOT fake news in this country, creating fictional scenes and characters suddenly seems trivial, and what's the point??? What has happened over the last ten/eleven days sucked the air out of creativity for a number of writers I know.
After editing them and publishing them, I avoid them if I can, since my writing from two years ago is atrocious compared to my writing today, both in style and quality. I cringe when I read my old attempts at humour especially.
Joanna wrote: "Just happened to me. Read through the first draft of Part One of my third thriller, and wondered why am I bothering with fiction with all that is going on around me? In the face of what is definite..."Try not to let it all get you down Joanna! At times like these we all need the escape good fiction can provide :)
Eldon, really appreciate the encouraging words.
Joanna wrote: "Eldon, really appreciate the encouraging words."Anytime!
Philip wrote: "On the topic matter - yes I sometimes do - normally on the nth edit.I now put it away and look at it after a few weeks.
One tip which I agree with - use text to speech for a run through - i kno..."
I've heard this before, but never thought of doing it until I found the feature on my computer last week. I got to playing with it and before I knew it, had gone through a full editing round with it. It really does add a new dynamic to the editing process...
J.J. wrote: "Philip wrote: "On the topic matter - yes I sometimes do - normally on the nth edit.I now put it away and look at it after a few weeks.
One tip which I agree with - use text to speech for a run ..."
That's good to know - It was a tip I was told on another forum and even more enhanced when I got a narrator for an audio version on one of mine. The narrator picked up several elements I had missed. Text to speech prepares that stage. Also try different computer voices male and female different accents - again it's another help to hear your MS in a different voice.
I don't so much hate reading it, but tired is more the word. My daughter gave me some good very simple advice. If you keep changing and rewriting sentences and words when there's no need, then it could lose its smooth flow.
Have more authors encountered this phenomenon? :)
By th4e third edit, I get that way, especially when I start finding things that i should have found earlier :-(
Yep, I wrote my book because I wanted to write exactly that book and I enjoyed it. What tires me is that I keep finding things that I wished I had written better. But that's life, nothing is perfect.
I absolutely reach a point where I can't stand my own work, but logically, I realize that's often because I've seen it over and over and over again, so what's redundant to me will be fresh for someone else. I've also found that if I step away and don't look at my work for, say, two weeks, it's fresher when I get back to it and I don't find myself cringing at every other word.
I get the other way doing comics now. It takes time to do a page, so it starts to feel like the story itself drags. I have to keep reading and rereading to remind myself the story actually flies at lightspeed.
Yes. Sometimes I will read some sections of my work and think 'Wow. That's pretty good. How did I come up with that? Maybe I have a future at this writing thing after all." Then I keep reading.
G.R. wrote: "Yes. Sometimes I will read some sections of my work and think 'Wow. That's pretty good. How did I come up with that? Maybe I have a future at this writing thing after all." Then I keep reading."🤣🤣🤣 Me too!
I got to a point where I lost the ability to objectively analyze whether it conveyed my idea after repeated self-edits and time. I didn't hate it but it got to the point I was ready and very very grateful for the editors to get a hold of it to give me their input.
Wow. You have editors? I am the writer, editor, publisher/marketer, and cover artist. Of those four tasks, I least enjoy the marketing aspect. Some people really hate editing and are not very good at finding their own spelling and punctuation errors or looking objectively at sentence structure. I actually enjoy it, at least for the first three or four iterations of the story. It does get more tedious after that. That, or I'm just not as engaged on it anymore and I want to move on to some other story.
G.R. wrote: "Wow. You have editors? I am the writer, editor, publisher/marketer, and cover artist. Of those four tasks, I least enjoy the marketing aspect. Some people really hate editing and are not very goo..."
I hired a freelance editing company, Red Adept. I needed the detachment and objectivity. It was candidly very helpful and I learned a lot for future work. I do a lot of my own editing, revising, etc. but I found having the separate eyes on it after that quite useful.
You are right. It takes a village. I benefited from a number of beta readers who made story suggestions and pointed things out to me that I definitely "missed" in my writing and self-editing.
I'm lucky enough to have a publisher who has a proof reader and an editor, however it doesn't take all of the burden away. It's amazing how a naughty little typo can slip through three people....🤷♀️
Oh, yeah, especially when Microsoft Word has an annoying habit of grabbing one or two extra words at the beginning of the sections of sentences or paragraphs you are trying to cut and paste.
About midway through my (admittedly multi-faceted) editing process. It's real easy to get down on myself because of that, too, but without fail, whenever I give the manuscript to someone else to edit, they rave about my writing -- which reminds me that what I've read over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, they're reading for the first time.Fresh eyes are very much a thing.
I'm still finding issues with books that are 4 years old. It seems to be never ending.
And, of course, I change, delete and add new stuff, which is a creative part and alleviates the feeling a bit. On the other hand, there are still typos here and there, even after editor's work..
For the authors here, can you read your own stuff for 15 times and equally enjoy it?