Elizabeth Drakes's Site

Fantasy Romance

deadline

Maybe I Can’t

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No, this is not a de-motivational poster.

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But he *always* pulls through.

I discuss time management a lot, and I realized something important.

I just can’t “do it all”. No matter what society tells me. No matter what society expects of me.

Sure Sheryl Sandberg wants us to “Lean In”, but I can almost guarantee she has never had to figure out how to pick up her child from dance class, get laundry done, and make sure dinner is on the table.

I guess this really hit home as I was looking at the list of writing projects I want to achieve, what I have achieved this year, and even where I have failed.

CelebrateSuccess
Except a writer is never done.

 

Successes

  • I will publish Knight of Valor this year.
  • I will publish A Knight’s Redemption within 6 months of Knight of Valor
  • I finished Leikar and Annabelle’s first draft
  • I will finish Rohan and Makayla’s first draft
  • I completed a third revision of A Knight’s Second Chance
  • I will complete a fourth revision of A Knight’s Second Chance

There will still be a few months left in the year for me to complete my other goals of:

  • Writing a third first draft novel
  • The really hard first-second draft revision of Rita (name may change) and Logan

Misses

Deadlines. They seem to go whooshing by.

DeadlinesWhoosh

 

Areas to Focus on

  • Accepting that creative endeavors are not the same as corporate finance. I am understanding a little better why we’re still waiting for Winds of Winter.
  • Accepting that I might have had unrealistic expectations for myself. Because that never happens…

All in, I am happy with the way the first half of this year went, but writing down goals put a little more stress on me than I was anticipating. Still, I think it has really helped me to focus and shown me how much I do accomplish.

Goal Update: A Bit of a Delay

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My beta reader was taking a bit longer than normal on this particular piece of work, and while I was a bit worried about it, they have a very busy life.

Yeah, that wasn’t it (though they do). Nice try on my part.

She gave me some high level feedback explaining why it was taking a bit longer.

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The look she gave me was very similar.

There will be a bit of a delay in releasing Knight of Valor.

She noted I needed to tighten my beginning. Doable within my original release date timeline.

More than that, I needed to flesh out my hero in the beginning. She thought he felt flat. I cringed a little, knowing why she was saying it and where it came from.

I wrote this book over four years ago. It was one of three books I completed when I first got back into writing, and the only one I loved the characters enough to try to salvage. The other two are now buried on my hard drive and are not fit for human eyes.

But I loved Sir Marcus. I wanted to do him justice. And through him and his story, and I pushed myself to do better as a writer. His story helped me learn a lot about finding my voice, plot and character development, and even trusting myself as a writer.

So, I’d set Knight of Valor aside for a while and work on other things, become a better writer, and tackle this story again.

During the process, I read a whole bunch of craft books. And you can see their influence on the story. One of them was how to write a romance hero…and I did Sir Marcus a lot of disservice. Granted, he overcomes the bad writing advice towards the middle on the book, but it takes him a while.

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I may be shabby from time to time, but his faith in me in strong.

At the time, they were telling romance authors that romance readers wanted alpha heroes. Don’t even bother writing anything else as it won’t sell and an agent won’t want it. So I changed him.

And he was no longer Sir Marcus.

Don’t misunderstand me. He is neither meek nor mild. He was not the “chosen one” and forced to do anything. He saw evil, and if there was a chance he could destroy that evil, he had to try. He dedicated most of his life training to do just that.

But he’s still a genuinely nice guy. The kind of person who’d come over and help you fix your roof because he heard you were having trouble without being asked. You’d share an ale afterwards, and that would be all the thanks he’d need or want.

Punch a kid or kick or dog? You don’t want him to see you do that.

Kill a village to fuel a evil spell?

Time to run. Fast.

middle-ages-knight

So, I need to let his true personality shine through the first half of the book as well as the second. No easy task, that.

Oh, and I need to fix a plot hole, tighten up my pacing, and remove a few loose ends from earlier drafts I missed. And this is before I get back the full list of revisions.

*deep breath*

I see why this is taking a bit of time to get back the beta read. I also know I sent this out for just this reason.

I am literally on my eighteenth revision of this story. Yeah. Eighteenth. That I’ve counted. The first draft and several subsequent ones (no idea how how many four, maybe five?), I didn’t number and track. I am really close to this story, and I’ve put a lot of work into it. I can sometimes lose the forest through the trees. So I need more help on this than most.

It means a lot to me. I really want to get it right.

So, this is going to be a large revision, not a small tighten-things-up late game revision.

And that’s okay. Sir Marcus deserves the best story I can give him.

Yes, it means my entire plan for the year needs to change.

Yes, it means I will not make that April publishing deadline.

Both are okay.

I want to give you the best story I can.

Delaying the release date until June or July gives me the time to make it the best that I can right now.

You deserve that, and so does Sir Marcus.

Delays, Delays, Delays

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Yes, it is the end of September. No, Seducing the Ice Queen isn’t done.

DeadlineMissed

I know, I promised September. And while the story is written and completely revised, I am still waiting on my cover artist. She is struggling with this cover, and so far, I have nothing to even show you.

And as we all judge a book by its cover, I want it to be good. Really good. One I’m excited to share with you.

I don’t have that. Yet.

I was supposed to have the cover two weeks ago, so I thought it would be ready for today. I am learning that deadlines mean less in creative endeavors than they do in corporate finance.

Once I get the cover, I will do the final formatting for the book. I then order the first copy for myself. I get to hold it in my hands, but I also do a final read through to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

If you want to join my mailing list, I will send out word there as soon as it is ready.

For Knight of Valor (currently in revision), I will order my cover at least a month in advance!

 

Consume vs. Create

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It’s so much easier for me to consume than to create.

I think we can agree that it’s easier to sit down to a delicious supper than it is to make one. Easier to wear a clean shirt than do laundry. And it’s easier to read a book than to write one.

You’ll note from the number of book reviews lately that I’ve been doing a lot of reading. As a writer, you’d think that would be a good thing. Maybe it is. Or maybe it’s a symptom of a much nastier beast.

The decision to consume someone else’s work rather than make my own. And, I’ve been consuming a bit of it lately. Some of it’s good, some of it’s not, and I have been trying to make a point of figuring out what works in the different novels I’ve been reading. That’s one of the reasons I write the reviews.

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I’d love to say that while I’m reading, I’m also taking time in the same day to edit. But that’s not true. I have a limited amount of non-work, non-kid time. If I’m reading a lot, you can guarantee its cutting into my writing time. Or devouring it altogether.

I could say I’m toying with ideas. That would be true. I have ideas for two more stories percolating. But that’s not what’s consuming my time.

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I could say I’m listening to my muse, studying steamy scenes, or any number of other things. But, they’d be lies. The truth is that I really don’t want to edit my story. The POV edit for a book is brutally hard. Harder than any other edit I’ve done, except the last POV edit. Does it need to be done? Probably. I mean, yes.

And maybe therein lies part of the problem. While my brain knows I need to do the rewrite, my heart is a little bitter. I still read authors who write with the POV I did on this novel, but they’re best-sellers, and I’m not. They get to do it, and I don’t. So does it need to be done? Yes. Do I want to do it? No. And there’s the difficulty.

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If we boil it down, it sounds an awful lot like procrastination dressed up as research. Because of course I have to read books in my chosen genre to become a better writer when I should be editing.

Yup. Procrastination.

Sneaky little sucker. Apparently, the brain can trick you into procrastinating, making you think you’re doing something else.

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But, this rewrite won’t write itself. I’ve already put so much into this book, I can’t leave it as electrons in my machine. The hero is one of my favorites I’ve ever written, and he deserves his story told and his happily-ever-after.

Back to the grindstone. Giving myself a deadline on Crowned Prince (possibly renamed to Dracor’s Chosen) really has helped. Perhaps I should draw a line in the sand and say I’ll have Knight of Valor’s POV rewritten by September 1st. There, I said it.

*gulp* Time to edit. Right after I finish Dracor’s Chosen. Still have until the end of June…

 

How about you? Ever had procrastination hide as something beneficial? Or do you always know when you’re procrastinating? Do you find it easier to consume than create? Maybe you like editing more than I do?