25-12-2022 - Happy holidays & week review
Revision 1 progress & future
15-01-2023 - 1 year ago - 3m 29s
It's been a while! My bad, my procrastinating on changing the website to weekly posting had grown a bit out of control. Not all changes have been finished yet, but the mailing is back and I plan to keep doing this weekly on Sundays. I'm happy to say I made a lot of progress on my writing… and some progress toward my work situation. More on that below.
In my last post, I wrote about the fixes to be made before I could start revising (see the TOFIX creation chapter for more on that). I did most of these in week 1 of Januari. These weren't a lot of work. Especially when compared to revising. Sheesh, I underestimated that. I started last Monday (09/01) with the thought, "I can do it all this week."... That's a nope. The most I've been able to push through on a single day, was 5K words, and that was a 9-10 hour work day. Here's how I'm working:
Revision #1 - 2-step process
I do these steps for each chapter, working through the story from start to end.
Both steps take about the same time and have already led to some big revisions for almost all chapters. Even chapters I thought were very good got torn apart already.
The weirdest thing, though, most books with advice on writing (or revisions specifically) talk about cutting 20% of the total length during revisions… Well, I seem to add about 20%. Don't get me wrong, I cut a lot throughout: double sentences, weird descriptions,… But I found a lot of parts to be really sparse on details or plain boring. I rewrote those parts and most of the time came out with a lot more and (in my opinion) better words.
"Where can I see these revisions?"
I had already made the features on this website so you can easily see each revision I made… but for the moment I'm not putting these online yet. When I'm done with this revision, I will send it to some publishers. I'm taking the shot. This wasn't my original plan for the story, but going through it again now has made me reconsider.
If it doesn't work out, I'll still put it all online and stop revisions there to work on another story… My fingers are itching to start something else.
I will make the completed revision available to subscribers once it's done.
At the time of writing this post, I'm about 18K words through the story, (chapter 9, Derrek's confrontation with Pigman). Next week, I'll continue this and hopefully finish it by the end of the week, after which I can contact publishers.
No real writing yet, but an outline is taking form. I've been playing with the characters and have already switched around a lot. Once the KC revision is through, I'll just start writing on this and see what comes out. I have the first part outlined, yet it's still vague how long this will become. It'll be following multiple POVs, so it could be lengthier than I'm expecting… More on that later!
I've struggled a lot with this over the last months. I'd love to fill my days with writing and learning new things, but that's just not a sustainable solution. My savings are plummeting and so this month I wanted to get something started again. I started with scouting for job openings, but found nothing that I really wanted to do… or not for long, anyway.
The idea of being self-employed has played in my head for years, but I'm ready to go for it. I always expected to start this as a secondary occupation, but since I can't find anything for now, I'll be committing in full. My plan is to mix coaching people (stress & burnout for now) with freelance web development, and still leave an opening for my writing to grow. I have no ambition to become a multi-employee company, just a way to choose my own work and make a sustainable living. I really hope that way exists.
This week I have some talks planned with externals to check if this is realistic or if it'll bury me in taxes. If I get good feedback from those, I'll start immediately.
So, hopefully bigger news on that next week..
Enjoy your Sunday!
Writing
Kane's Cases: The Farmhouse - Revising
In my last post, I wrote about the fixes to be made before I could start revising (see the TOFIX creation chapter for more on that). I did most of these in week 1 of Januari. These weren't a lot of work. Especially when compared to revising. Sheesh, I underestimated that. I started last Monday (09/01) with the thought, "I can do it all this week."... That's a nope. The most I've been able to push through on a single day, was 5K words, and that was a 9-10 hour work day. Here's how I'm working:
Revision #1 - 2-step process
I do these steps for each chapter, working through the story from start to end.
- Reread and edit - spellcheck on: I read through the chapter and edit where I notice weird parts. This is the first time I'm also using a spellcheck (ProWritingAid) on this chapter.
- Listen check: Some writing advice I ripped from... somewhere? It's to actually listen to how your story sounds. Now, I am not reading it aloud on my own. That'd be really tedious. But I got some great text-to-speech software (Speechify) that can handle uploaded PDFs. After completing my first step, I get it in there and listen to the entire chapter again. Meanwhile, I make fixes where it sounds off. I was astonished the first time I did this. I thought I'd only pick out some occasional double word, but no: Pacing issues, tone, restructuring of entire paragraphs… And well, it sounds cool to hear the thing I wrote spoken out loud, even if it's done by an AI.
Both steps take about the same time and have already led to some big revisions for almost all chapters. Even chapters I thought were very good got torn apart already.
The weirdest thing, though, most books with advice on writing (or revisions specifically) talk about cutting 20% of the total length during revisions… Well, I seem to add about 20%. Don't get me wrong, I cut a lot throughout: double sentences, weird descriptions,… But I found a lot of parts to be really sparse on details or plain boring. I rewrote those parts and most of the time came out with a lot more and (in my opinion) better words.
"Where can I see these revisions?"
I had already made the features on this website so you can easily see each revision I made… but for the moment I'm not putting these online yet. When I'm done with this revision, I will send it to some publishers. I'm taking the shot. This wasn't my original plan for the story, but going through it again now has made me reconsider.
If it doesn't work out, I'll still put it all online and stop revisions there to work on another story… My fingers are itching to start something else.
I will make the completed revision available to subscribers once it's done.
At the time of writing this post, I'm about 18K words through the story, (chapter 9, Derrek's confrontation with Pigman). Next week, I'll continue this and hopefully finish it by the end of the week, after which I can contact publishers.
Aegis
No real writing yet, but an outline is taking form. I've been playing with the characters and have already switched around a lot. Once the KC revision is through, I'll just start writing on this and see what comes out. I have the first part outlined, yet it's still vague how long this will become. It'll be following multiple POVs, so it could be lengthier than I'm expecting… More on that later!
Work
I've struggled a lot with this over the last months. I'd love to fill my days with writing and learning new things, but that's just not a sustainable solution. My savings are plummeting and so this month I wanted to get something started again. I started with scouting for job openings, but found nothing that I really wanted to do… or not for long, anyway.
The idea of being self-employed has played in my head for years, but I'm ready to go for it. I always expected to start this as a secondary occupation, but since I can't find anything for now, I'll be committing in full. My plan is to mix coaching people (stress & burnout for now) with freelance web development, and still leave an opening for my writing to grow. I have no ambition to become a multi-employee company, just a way to choose my own work and make a sustainable living. I really hope that way exists.
This week I have some talks planned with externals to check if this is realistic or if it'll bury me in taxes. If I get good feedback from those, I'll start immediately.
So, hopefully bigger news on that next week..
Enjoy your Sunday!