What I've learned so far.

This is pretty obvious stuff, most of it, but nonetheless valuable for me to keep in mind.

1.) Finish the book.  This is important, and I think it's one of the things that really keeps people who want to be writers from being writers.  They don't finish because they don't think they're good enough.  Well, you're never going to be good enough if you don't finish.  You aren't going to be perfect, you probably aren't even going to be very good, especially at first.  Sorry.  But you still finish the book.

2.) Go on to the next book.

3.) Come back the original book after you've given it some time away, and give it a good rewrite.

4.) Find beta readers, wherever and however you can. This is essential.  Don't hide your work, expose it.  And if you can hire a professional editor, do that too.  Take their damn advice if you sense it is correct, ignore their damn advice if you sense it is wrong.  But if two or three people tell you the same thing, you better take it seriously.

5.) Don't send it off when it is "good enough."  Send it off after you've given it another couple of tries to get it better.  Notice, I don't say, when you've got it "right" or "perfect" because that never happens.

6.)  Don't rewrite so much that you lose the "sense" of the book, the things that attracted you about the story in the first place.

7.)  The story comes from inside.  Once you've committed to writing the book, ignore all outside examples and advice.  Not advice about the book itself, but just the "writing advice" that you find online or in books or from everyone who wants to give you advice.  Formula's, bleh. 

8.)  Assemble all the necessary ingredients from the start.  Have a theme in mind, a cast of characters (both good and bad), a setting that is thought out, and so on.  It's like having a recipe.  You can't bake the cake without the necessary ingredients.  If you leave out the egg white, you can't inject it later, all you can do is put frosting on top, which may cover some of the bad taste but doesn't really solve the problem.

9.)  Have a general story arc in mind.

10.) But let the characters and setting and situations dictate the plot. 

11.) Be willing to make lots of course corrections.  I realized after I wrote the entire book of Almost Human (now Faerylander) that I had the wrong tone and approach.  I had to go back and completely revamp the book a bunch of times.

When I got to Death of an Immortal, I'd learned my lesson.  I started off with a kind of humorous, snarky tone, just like I did with Almost Human.  I seem to always be able to do that for a few chapters, but I can't keep it up through a whole book.  I lose interest.  Humor is a distancing device, I think.  I failed to relate to the characters after awhile.  Maybe it's just me, but it is me and I needed to do something about it.  So only a chapter in, I went back and took out my beautiful lines.

Then 3 chapters in, I realized that the theme of a vampire king who had decided never to bite another human didn't have a whole lot of potential for action, so I brought in a couple of bad guys.  And therein came the plot.

So instead of writing a whole book stubbornly unwilling to change, I made a course correction.

12.)  Don't keep starting over, though.  Course corrections mean you're dealing with the stuff in front of you.  For me, it is a terrible mistake to go back and start rewriting from the beginning.  Finish the book before you start rewriting.



So here's just a few things I've learned so far.  (There are many more, obviously.) 

Maybe they only apply to me, but here they are.