To write is to be free
Just completed the first draft of The Dragon’s Mate. I didn’t do any structural changes because I took care of that in the first write-up. But after writing up the synopsis for the first time, I saw that there might be some changes in the next edits. In a nutshell, the one-line synopsis is; A wizard’s apprentice must overcome his fear of his King to ensure that the realm is safe from his desire to control the last known dragon in existence. An extended version is on the page for the novella.
These ten days have been all over the place. I’ve switched to another story because this one is actually complete and I didn’t want to write new stuff when I had a whole draft waiting. The Cadetship was completed in 2016 and has mostly been left untouched. It has already gone through one draft years ago, but now I’m back to finish it. It was during the editing of the first part that I’ve decided to change the name to Becoming Stardust. I was planning on releasing the first part as a free prologue/short story to get people interested and then add it to the paperback.
I’m having so much fun editing this piece 🙂 But I seem to be putting a lot of pressure on myself as well. My editing stamina has gone down and I can only do so much before I get miserable. I think it is because the edits I’m doing are a more complete overhaul and not minor sentence changes. Some entire chapters were just solid red in track changes mode 😦 But I wasn’t bothered because I know that it means that I’ve improved with my writing and don’t see it as a failure.
The first ten days of trying to get myself back into writing did not go well. I got distracted by games and even today played a good six hours of The Sims. And to top things off, I had my giant cross-stitch that I ordered online arrive a few days early. Here is a breakdown of what I did.
My goal of doing something every day seemed to be too much of a reach. After weeks of not doing anything towards my writing, I am still disappointed by what I have accomplished. All this editing was on one story and I had gone and done substantial changes on it despite this being old ground. Maybe I’ve levelled up again, but who knows. Below is the track changes I have done. It ends after the first page on the third row.
My arrival in Utrecht coincides with the coronavirus shutdown. The beginning of my six months of freedom should be documented to make me more accountable. I plan to make the most of this time and make up for the last year of general disappointments. I’ll be updating my progress in 10 day lots as opposed to weekly because I’m now running in a different time zone. So look out for my progress reports and see if I either fly or fall 🙂
Feet or Fins was first published four years ago. It entered the world quietly because I didn’t market it and that was a good thing because of how bad it was written. I had to have a friend point it out to me and I went back and was like, ‘Yeah, your right. Good thing no one bought it.’
That was my first foray into the self-publishing world and boy was I glad no one noticed. I did like 14/15 drafts of that book and it still wasn’t good enough 😦 But the next draft was immensely better. Thank you, friend.
For the longest time, it was only on Smashwords and then I got over the idea that Amazon was somehow lesser because it was a global corporation and knew that it would help me if I joined. Then I used the site to create a paperback version. By this stage, I had created a second cover image and when I finally got around to ordering a physical copy for myself I saw a few formatting issues. I used asterisks to separate some scenes instead and a few of them were out of place. Recently I updated my cover image again! I think this one is a lot nicer, and it features two mermaids.
I will be 30 in about five months and my goal of having 10 stories out by then looks to be kaput. I thought it was a reasonable goal, but alas it was too much for me. On a brighter note, I’m getting my writing bug back and have been slowly working on some stories. There is one that I mentioned way back that it might be my best story yet. I had stalled on it but have now written another chunk. But I know this book is far from completion. There are a lot of others that are nowhere near completion and I don’t know when my next publication will be 😦 Maybe it will be a case that in a year or two I will end up pushing out a lot of them.
Currently, I’m going over a sci-fi mystery novella. I haven’t finished the first draft and since not touching it for over six months I have forgotten what I had written, however, I know what needs to happen etc. I’m editing as I go to get back into the story. Once finished, I’m not sure if I’m going to go back and edit that shit out of it or go onto finishing other first drafts (I have a bazillion). I don’t think I’ll be publishing another story this year, but who knows.
August is coming up in Edinburgh and that means having only one day off a week and everything being balls to the walls dealing with all the extra tourists. I doubt I’ll have time to write or edit. Afterwards, I should get back into everything.
I’ve bought myself a planner/calendar that shows the entire month so that I can visualise my time and maybe that’ll help me get back into things. I did a similar thing in uni and that helped me keep ahead of my assignments. I could just be the thing to motivate me into getting back my mojo.
I opened this word doc and to my surprise saw that I was already mostly done with this draft. I guess I gave up some time ago lol. Anyhow, I’ve had this story in the works since mid ’17 and god damn have dragged my feet on this. But I’m worried about when I have it done and there is no sequel ready. I have only written the first chapter and dot points for the next series of events.
I did more editing than I thought I would for something that is supposed to be in its eleventh draft. I think I deleted as much as I added. I know I have more to do with it as Chris has given me some pretty decent comments to go on.
I hope that when this is ready to be released I will have progressed with the next story. Also, I have no idea how that story is going to end and where the third book begins eeeek!
I’ve just managed to finish the eight draft of this novella 🙂 It’s been a long time coming. I wasn’t going to be doing any editing at the moment, but after having a talk to one of my friend’s convinced me to push myself. I did 39 pages in one day and the other 15 the next day 🙂
Overall I didn’t need to do that much to it I think it might be ready with three more drafts. I don’t know exactly when I’ll put this one out, but I want it done and dusted by July. It is currently 32,500 words or 54 A4 pages.
Stephanie Haggarty 