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Things I Learned Writing Knight of Valor

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Pending no major calamities, Knight of Valor will be released at the end of this month. I started writing this book in January of 2015, so it’s taken over four years to write, edit, revise, rewrite, edit again… You get the picture.

During that time, I learned a lot about writing, both the craft aspect of it, but also what works for me. Here are a few things I learned.

You Get Better the More You Write

I was just getting back into writing in 2015 after a long sabbatical, and it was a challenge to write even the first draft. While writing may have a degree of talent, see George RR Martin or Nora Roberts, it also has a huge degree of practice. The more I write, the better I get at it. I have to believe this is also a part of why George RR Martin and Nora Roberts are so amazing. Certainly, I need to read, too. Studying craft books helps as well. But none of that replaces the work of sitting down and crafting a story.

Revising is Crucial

I need to revise. My first draft is far from perfect. So very far. It is mostly a sandbox I have shoveled sand into that becomes the rough lump of a story. Revising turns that lump into a sandcastle. Some stories take more drafts than others. Knight of Valor took more than twenty drafts. A big part of the revision process was making up for how rough the first draft really was. I was out of practice when I wrote it. More recent works have required seven or eight revisions. I almost felt bad about it.  Then I came across this.

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Yeah, even he had to rewrite.

Take Only the Advice That Works for You – Ignore the Rest

Part of the reason this book had so many revisions was I took a lot of advice I shouldn’t have. More benign advice was to write in any order than piece those scenes together. Yeaaaah, no. Doesn’t work for me, and it created a lot more work in the revision process.

For example, I was also reading a lot of craft books on romance as I wrote this, and they were all touting the alpha male as really the only hero most romance readers wanted to read about. So I revised and changed the hero and made him a lot more alpha. But then I didn’t like him anymore, and that meant I didn’t like the story Knight of Valor became. So I revised it again, removing most of the edits I had added, then focusing on really showing who he was instead of what a craft book told me he should be.

 

EatMushroomsAdvice
What works for one author doesn’t always work for another.

 

Write Your Story

Which leads me into my last point: learning to trust myself to write my story. The one I want to tell. The one that reflects my characters. That can be a lot harder than it sounds, as I learned writing Knight of Valor. Doubt is a powerful force, especially when you are working on a story for years at a time. When there are so many things going on around you personally, professionally, and in the world. Sometimes it can seem foolish to question those who “know” what they’re doing. In writing Knight of Valor, I’m glad I did. Even though it took me all those revisions to do it.

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.

Progress Update – May 2019

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Things are interesting.

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Progress Through May

I completed my May goal of finishing a new first draft about Annabelle and Leikar. Yes, Annabelle from Seducing the Ice Queen, and those were snippets of Leikar’s back story on some of my micro-fictions.

I was also able to work through a third draft revision of The Pirate Captain’s Daughter and send that off to my beta readers. I had planned to do that in September.

I also finished the final revision of A Knight’s Redemption, which was my June goal. I am now working through all of the administrative things it takes to publish a novel. This novel was supposed to release in mid-June but now won’t until several months after Knight of Valor comes out.

Why? Because it’s the fourth book in the series, and Knight of Valor is the third. My amazing editor got it back to me on Memorial Day saying once I made her last round of revisions, it was ready for final line editing.

I have started that round of revisions…Okay, so I haven’t.

My issue is, once again, time.

See, I started a new novel.

plotbunny

Yeah, I know, I know.

I thought it was going to be a nice short story, maybe a novella I could give away for free as an introduction to the series.

Except now I am at 30,000 words and still going strong. And I *know* better than to stop now to edit something else. I will lose my momentum, my muse will turn on me faster than Jon Snow did Daenerys, and I will be lucky to finish this novel at all.

Sometimes it sucks to be a pantser and write without an outline or anything more than a vague idea where the story is going. But that is my writing style, for better or worse, and it’s the only way I have ever been able to finish a novel.

I am going to take a deep breath and keep working through this current novel. Once it’s done, I will polish Knight of Valor. Yes, I am going to be approximately three months late releasing it.

I am truly sorry.

SorryForgiveMe
Please?

I hate missing deadlines, and I seldom do.

But you deserve the best I can do with this story and so do the characters.

The good news is A Knight’s Redemption is very close to being ready. With some luck and hard work, I will have it out within six months of releasing Knight of Valor.

 

 

Don’t Be a Writer

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At least, don’t be a writer of romance novels when your daughter is in first grade but reading at the fifth grade level, and she wants to read the book you wrote.

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Yeah.

About that…Errr, no.

I tell her the stories in my books will scare her, and there is some truth to that. She has put down more than one book in her few short years because there was death in it. She almost quit reading The Magic Treehouse series altogether because of a book in the series where the kids go back in time, meet an Egyptian queen, but when they return to the present, the queen is a mummy. My daughter was super unhappy about it, saying it was a terrible ending.

I have no idea where she gets it from. *whistles while avoiding eye contact*

Wasntme
I swear!

 

And I’m totally lying.

But my romance novels are not fade-to-black. And there is no way she is ready for one of them, much less one her mom wrote.

Heck, I’m not ready for her to read them and the barrage of questions that will come.

But she is my daughter, and as we were playing a video game together, her main focus wasn’t on the combat, or maximizing loot, it was all about marrying off the characters. She was especially delighted when that resulted in the parents being “gifted” with an unruly child they had to deal with.

I have no idea where she gets it from. *whistles while avoiding eye contact*

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It was the cat. Yeah, the cat.

 

Kids show you the best and worst sides of yourself.

I’ve toyed with writing her a story just for her, but I’m not sure I can do it. Or that I want to spend my writing time doing it when Knight of Valor is calling to me.

Maybe I could rewrite my current stories and remove the non-fade-to-black scenes.

I’m trying to remember when I first started reading Victoria Holt, and I’m almost certain it was fifth or six grade. I still remember sitting on my bed devouring book after book, and based on where the bed was positioned, I know it had to be before seventh grade when we moved. It wasn’t too long after that I discovered Kathleen Woodwiss and was cemented as a lifelong romance reader.

Granted, it wasn’t until much more recently that I decided I wanted to write what I read. I’d toyed with traditional fantasy, urban paranormal, and science fiction before realizing I could incorporate those into romance and write what I read.

And I’ve never looked back!

Why I Disagree with Internships

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A bit of a segue from my normal writing discussion, but something that has been bothering me for a long time.

 

Unpaid Internships

I have been frustrated with the rise of unpaid internships. That someone, somewhere, thinks it’s okay to ask people to work, to provide value, and then not to pay them for that work. Sure, the intern is learning something, but then so am I much of the time I’m at work. And I still expect to be paid for it.

UnpaidInternship
And you should be happy to have it! *eye roll*

All the stranger that the government allows companies to use workers without paying those workers and the corresponding taxes that should go with those workers. Or, maybe not.

 

Paid Internships

I hadn’t thought much of paid internships until I was having lunch with the director of engineering and he was talking up a candidate he was interviewing. The young man was a sophomore in college who already had extensive international engineering experience after two high profile internships.

Experiencebeforeexperience
Because that’s totally reasonable.

 

I reviewed the candidate’s resume, and while it was good, I asked the engineer how he thought the young man got such prestigious internships so early in his academic career. After some discussion, the engineer agreed it was unusual. He chalked it up to the candidate being stellar and went on to make the young man an offer.

The candidate didn’t accept with us, so I never met him. But a part of me suspects there was more to it than a brilliant young mind. After years of watching my company’s internship program, I’ve learned a few things.

Poor kids usually don’t do internships. They can’t afford a car to drive to the facility. They can’t afford to pay room and board in addition to whatever agreements they’ve signed back at school. And most poor kids don’t have the connections to get their foot in the door in the first place.

That young man with the incredible internship experiences before sophomore year? I can almost guarantee there was some family connection there. Sure, he did the internship, but he got it through established privilege. And the internship masked the privilege as merit.

That one candidate really made me pause to examine the entire internship program. If internships were as prevalent when I was in school as they are today, would I have been able to land the first job I did that propelled me through my career? Or is this another way to limit social mobility while masking it as meritocracy?

I’m not sure.

But internships are not about to go away, so I think it’s something we should all be asking ourselves.

Progress Update: April

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So, my progress hasn’t been as spectacular as I would’ve liked.

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Still trying.

Yes, I finished Second Chance, but it’s just shy of 60,000 words, and I was aiming for 70,000.

The story is complete, and I almost always add another 10-15% in revisions. While I have heard the advice to “kill your darlings”, I simply don’t write a lot of extras.

Actually, I write quite the opposite way.

While I’m not a plotter, some might consider my first draft closer to a robust outline than a fully finished novel. I need to go back and add more internal dialogue for the characters, give better descriptions of places, and expand on several other details to make the characters feel more real.

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An actual picture of my first draft.

But the plot is there. Character motivation is there. And I think the chemistry between the characters really works. It’s not what I had originally set out to create, but my dark mage surprised me, and I ran with it.

At lot more will be fleshed out during editing. This is partly because I give myself at least six months between finishing a first draft and editing it. It gives me space from it so I can come back with fresh eyes, and I can see better what I’m missing as I am not as close to what I know is happening versus what I wrote.

I have plenty of other projects to work on in the meantime, so I promise I won’t be idle.

Like that edit on Knight of Valor.

Which I *might* not have gotten as far on as I would have liked.

Apr2019Goal
But there is progress

Okay, I definitely didn’t.

I have a slew of reasons. That trip to Ohio. The slog. My day job and April 15th happening this month.

Still, I did get Second Chance written, and I’m almost 1/3 of the way through this revision for Knight of Valor. Then it’s back off for another round of beta reading.

I already have back A Knight’s Redemption (working title) that I’m planning to release later this year. I will start making those edits as soon as Knight of Valor is ready. There’s a whole lot less red on that one, so there’s a good chance that will be ready on time.

Editing A Knight’s Redemption is my June goal, and if I can meet it, I will back on track by the end of June.

editing

Maybe.