The Way of Flesh
Wow, what a two week period I just went through!
I've been extremely busy—to the point I'd forget what day of the week it was. I had three online signings with Jim Butcher, Terry Brooks, and Peter Hamilton, which meant the majority of those two weeks was boxing up and shipping out orders for fans. Jim was great fun and I look forward to seeing him again. Peter is a Brit who is too intelligent for his own good. And Terry Brooks is always the good friend and mentor.
I really enjoy doing the signings. I love speaking to fantasy fans and helping them out. I like meeting writers and talking to them about the business and the craft. The Signed Page is a part of my life in a way I never thought it would be, and I doubt I will ever end it.
Then multiple websites had to be updated. And I deep-cleaned my apartment—gotta love springtime cleaning. Tons of errands had to be run for my upcoming New York City trip. 15 hour days for two weeks was not fun.
It retarded my opportunities elsewhere. I got no writing done. At all. I simply had no time for it. After I got all the books shipped out and websites updated, I finally could get to editing the first four chapters of The Dagda King for Stephen King's foreign rights agent, Ralph Vicinanza. Arguably, this was the most important thing I had to do, for my future plans at least, and it was the last thing I could do due to the responsibility I feel toward my customers.
But the chapters are finished. Shortened. Tightened. Crisp. They are closer to how I wish them to be. It was also very enjoyable going back to those first few chapters and see how my writing and story have changed over the last few months. Those first four chapters are the first arc in the story; they open up many questions without many answers. I hope Ralph enjoys the chapters and we can sit down when I am in New York and talk about the book and any areas of development I need to address for better writing down the road.
Here are the adjusted word counts for those chapters:
Prologue: 3045
Chapter 1: 4075
Chapter 2: 2973
Chapter 3: 3241
Here are the old numbers:
Prologue: 3173
Chapter 1: 4060
Chapter 2: 3244
Chapter 3: 3660
Chapter One actually went up in word count, but I had to smooth over some transitions that were kind of choppy. Other than that, the chapters went down in word count. Chapter 3 had the most significant reduction, but it is an action-packed chapter and I found far too much description in it.
If Ralph likes them, I may have a very professional agent behind me once I finish the book. If he doesn't, I hope to hear his thoughts with unabashed insight included. This New York trip couldn't be coming at a better time, and I hope I come back with good news.
I also gave the four chapters to a friend in the UK who loved my first book but who doesn't like urban fantasy. We'll see what he has to say about them and I hope he posts his thoughts here for you guys to read.
Back to preparing for the New York trip. I think I am finally going to relax today after so many days of work, and I might even take in a Mariners baseball game this afternoon to get away from my work for a while.
Hope you all are well! More updates from New York!
I've been extremely busy—to the point I'd forget what day of the week it was. I had three online signings with Jim Butcher, Terry Brooks, and Peter Hamilton, which meant the majority of those two weeks was boxing up and shipping out orders for fans. Jim was great fun and I look forward to seeing him again. Peter is a Brit who is too intelligent for his own good. And Terry Brooks is always the good friend and mentor.
I really enjoy doing the signings. I love speaking to fantasy fans and helping them out. I like meeting writers and talking to them about the business and the craft. The Signed Page is a part of my life in a way I never thought it would be, and I doubt I will ever end it.
Then multiple websites had to be updated. And I deep-cleaned my apartment—gotta love springtime cleaning. Tons of errands had to be run for my upcoming New York City trip. 15 hour days for two weeks was not fun.
It retarded my opportunities elsewhere. I got no writing done. At all. I simply had no time for it. After I got all the books shipped out and websites updated, I finally could get to editing the first four chapters of The Dagda King for Stephen King's foreign rights agent, Ralph Vicinanza. Arguably, this was the most important thing I had to do, for my future plans at least, and it was the last thing I could do due to the responsibility I feel toward my customers.
But the chapters are finished. Shortened. Tightened. Crisp. They are closer to how I wish them to be. It was also very enjoyable going back to those first few chapters and see how my writing and story have changed over the last few months. Those first four chapters are the first arc in the story; they open up many questions without many answers. I hope Ralph enjoys the chapters and we can sit down when I am in New York and talk about the book and any areas of development I need to address for better writing down the road.
Here are the adjusted word counts for those chapters:
Prologue: 3045
Chapter 1: 4075
Chapter 2: 2973
Chapter 3: 3241
Here are the old numbers:
Prologue: 3173
Chapter 1: 4060
Chapter 2: 3244
Chapter 3: 3660
Chapter One actually went up in word count, but I had to smooth over some transitions that were kind of choppy. Other than that, the chapters went down in word count. Chapter 3 had the most significant reduction, but it is an action-packed chapter and I found far too much description in it.
If Ralph likes them, I may have a very professional agent behind me once I finish the book. If he doesn't, I hope to hear his thoughts with unabashed insight included. This New York trip couldn't be coming at a better time, and I hope I come back with good news.
I also gave the four chapters to a friend in the UK who loved my first book but who doesn't like urban fantasy. We'll see what he has to say about them and I hope he posts his thoughts here for you guys to read.
Back to preparing for the New York trip. I think I am finally going to relax today after so many days of work, and I might even take in a Mariners baseball game this afternoon to get away from my work for a while.
Hope you all are well! More updates from New York!
Labels: The Dagda King
posted by Shawn C. Speakman | 8:05 AM
5 Comments:
Right on, Shawn. I thought you had fallen off the face of the Earth! Glad to hear things are still moving ahead with the novel. Editing is tough business when all you want to do is move on with the novel.
I know, I've slowly been editing the first 8 chapters of my own novel so that I can distribute it. But I have to balance that with actually moving the story forward as well.
Can't wait to hear about your encounter with Ralph. I'm envious of him for getting such an early look at the novel!
~Aidan
A Dribble of Ink
Seems you get to meet interesting people at least.
I had to take a break from my own writing as well last week, but for other reasons. Essentially I'd gotten stuck in my chapter 8 (really 6 as I decided to delete 5 and 6 but kept the slots open) and started thinking about things and realised I'd best do some more research.
So right now I'm back to world building, I expect I'll be at that for another week. Then I will revise the completed chapters and only after that continue chapter 8.
Oh, I almost forgot. What type of word count do you use? I was wondering because your chapters sound relatively short to me (not too short, just shorter than mine which range from ~5500 to ~7500 words, of course these aren't tightened yet). I'm simply using MS-Word's word count, but am aware there are at least two other systems (6 characters per word and essentially a system looking at total characters per page which gives a better idea of print pages).
Aidan: Yup, right off the face of the planet. Then again, I've never really been here anyway, right?
I love editing. It has a quiet appeal to me. There is just something fun and magical about getting into writing I've mostly forgotten, reading it as a new reader would, and fixing the problems that arose in that initial drafting. So I can't say all the hard work I did recently wasn't fun at least.
Congratulations on editing those first eight chapters. Can't wait to see the first few posted so we all can read them.
I'll post what Ralph thinks, down to the dirty details. And I am looking forward to posting pictures and my other exploits while in the Big Apple. It's been two years since I had a vacation; this one is long overdue.
Caranorn: Yeah, I am pretty lucky when it comes to meeting interesting people. I am consistently surprised at how nice writers are; I've only met two who rubbed me the wrong way and those two could have just been having bad days for all I know. I've worked hard over the years to get in this position -- it certainly wasn't handed to me in any way -- and that hard work and networking is paying off for my writing. These people are just normal people and I think if more new writers got out there and met established writers, editors, and agents, asked them to coffee for an hour to pick their brain and build a friendship, that their own break into the industry wouldn't seem so difficult.
Back to your work, sounds like you had I had the same epiphany concerning our work. I too came to a point I had to stop to do more research, and although that slows down the writing it is also necessary -- and can be fun too. Doing the research for this book was interesting to the point I found it difficult to stop the research in favor of the writing. But it all worked out and I feel comfortable to write now in a way I wouldn't have if I hadn't done the research. So good luck with the world building!
About word count, I just use the word count offered in Word. Word count is used as a simple guide for how large a published book will be. Make no mistake: word count matters to publishers as larger books with more pages cost more to produce. That cost means the cover price must go up, which means there is a higher likelihood someone won't buy the book. Sad but true, and publishers worry about this and their bottom line.
The other system of counting words is kind of useless. And here's why: the minor differences between the two systems can be accounted for in the production layout of the book. Production editors can adjust for those minor differences by using Quark/Adobe InDesign and adjusting the font size, the width between lines, the margins of the page, etc. What would be 10 pages one way can be reduced to 7 or 8 with some savvy adjusting in those two programs.
So I only care about my chapters relative the chapters I've already written. As long as they are somewhere in the same ballpark, all is well.
Now, concerning the differences in size between our chapters, that's entirely fine. Writers create chapters of different length all the time. I'll give two different sets of examples:
- Steven Erikson's chapters are 70 pages in some cases.
- Cormac McCarthy's The Road has no chapters, only breaks.
- The DaVinci Code has chapters with only one sentence worth of material.
It all depends on the writer and what they are comfortable with. Song of the Fell Hammer, my first book, has chapter averages of about 5500 words. It is a large sprawling epic fantasy and it demanded those chapter lengths to get the story out.
As you know from The Dagda King, the chapters are averaging about 3400 words per chapter. This is an urban fantasy, and I don't have to world build as much as I did in that first novel, which is great because I can just get to the action immediately.
Just continue to write chapter lengths you feel comfortable with. There really is no guideline, other than this one: the average novel size is 90,000 words. The average novel size in the fantasy genre is like 110,000 words. To improve your chances with publishers, shoot for somewhere around there. My first novel was 199,000, and I have no doubt that large of a tome had a lot to do with it not even being looked at by some people, let alone passed on. Just something to think about.
THE WAY OF FLESH
Sounds like a good name for a book.
Anonymous: I was talking to Terry Brooks on the phone about a week ago, trying to figure out our trip to New York City and the NY Comic Con, when he used that phrase to describe a writer who has stopped selling copies of new releases--a kind of death.
The writer has gone the way of flesh.
I nearly had an aneurysm when Terry said it. I've never heard the expression before and I really liked it. I don't think it works for the first book, but it might the second, and since I had just finished all of those errands I liked the idea that they had gone the way of flesh.
Anyway, glad to hear someone else likes it. I might use it down the road.
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