Well hello there. All of a sudden, it’s 2023. I realize that it has been over two years since the last blog post, and I think it’s finally time to address things here and talk about what’s been happening and what’s going to come next from this whole thing.

Fair warning, this is a long blog post that is mostly self-indulgent. I’m kind of putting things down here for posterity and to explain what I’ve been doing for the past two years. I don’t plan on doing posts like this often, but I felt this was as good a way as any to reinvigorate this place. Look for more posts about the mechanics of writing and storytelling in the future!

The story starts in late 2020. I had just completed my first draft of Toric. There were several stages that went into this milestone. I finished the first complete draft in the late summer, then spent the last 4-5 months of the year on long, arduous editing passes. I have learned a ton about editing since then and I think it will make for a great series of blog posts someday, but that’s not what I’m here for right now. By the beginning of the new year, 2021, I finally felt like the manuscript was in a solid enough place to share. So I did. I sent it out to a few beta readers and the initial feedback was very positive! So much so, that I figured that maybe this actually had a shot at publication.

I took that time in January 2021, while my beta readers were busy actually reading the thing, to put together the website that you are reading this blog post on now. There were two reasons for this. One, I’m a software engineer in my professional life, so this did end up being a fun and interesting challenge. But more importantly, this was yet another box to tick in that slow march towards potential publication. I read the articles, I followed the experts’ advice, and I knew that having a website and a social presence could only help me out. It was a somewhat cynical driving force. Here I was building this space, but I was unpublished and barely even starting my journey. The website as it stood, served no real purpose. I didn’t have dedicated fans. Even my close family and friends never once asked me when I was going to upload a new blog post.

So then, where was I? I had written a couple blogs, posted on twitter for a month or two semi-regularly, and had implemented some small changes and tweaks suggested by my beta readers. At that point, development and updates of my website and blog ceased. I moved on to researching potential agents that might be a fit for my shiny new draft of Toric, and then actually blasted out a series of submissions, tracking everything diligently in a Google sheet. Then, all I had to do was wait for those positive responses. So I waited. And waited…

Well, long story short, I didn’t get any bites from my initial query efforts. Thankfully, I knew not to press my luck and ceased my query submissions pretty quickly, not wanting to burn all my opportunities (many agents will only let you submit a particular manuscript to them once, so you better be confident that you’ve done everything you can on it). This took me back to the drawing board in a somewhat confused state. The wind had been taken out of my sails.

At this point I think it is important to discuss what was going on in the world. Let’s transport you back to spring 2021. Here I was, mentally exhausted from the mad dash to get the book ready in 2020, and for the first time in over a year, things were looking up in the world. The first vaccines were arriving, people were extremely excited to get out and do things again, and I got swept up in all of it. It wasn’t until summer that life started to feel normal again, and I sat back down and started to examine what I had with my manuscript and what needed to happen to get it back into a position that I could be happy with it.

The thing I quickly settled on was that I had to be 100% confident in my manuscript before beginning the query submission process again. I set myself a goal. I wanted to have the next version of my completed manuscript of Toric done before the end of the year. There were three things that went into this.

1. I needed a plan.
2. Once my plan was established, I had to actually do the rewrites and edits.
3. Once I was done, I decided I needed to hire a professional editor to actually give it to me straight. Again, I can only query an agent once. It is extremely valuable to me to properly understand whether my manuscript is even ready for that.

By fall 2021, I had my plan. This centered on three driving points.

1. From a mechanics perspective, I was being far too cavalier and amateurish with my perspectives. Third Person Limited is a limited perspective. I not only had sections of chapters where I swapped perspectives too often, but I found myself head hopping and dipping back to third person omniscient far more than I had realized at first. I had to tighten up everything.
2. The beginning had to be completely redone. I still had sections of chapters that were largely untouched from when I had first written them, almost a decade ago, and it was clear that they were not up to my current standards. The beginning is so important in grabbing a reader’s attention, that I felt like it was better just to get a fresh start.
3. Most importantly, the manuscript was simply too long.

Point number three was my biggest hurdle. My manuscript at its peak was approaching 190k words. Sure, compared to a Brandon Sanderson or George R. R. Martin novel, a sub 200k word count is child’s play. But, for an agent looking at a first time author’s submission, that number is a massive red flag. All it tells them is that I don’t know how to edit my work properly. Most novels for an adult audience come in at 120k words or so. Sure, the research I did mentioned that some genres would go longer, and fantasy, especially epic fantasy, was often cited as an example. But, they were talking about more like 150k words, not 200k+. So I set myself a target. I wanted to cut 30k words. Ideally, I’d be under that 150k cutoff.

So, for the remainder of 2021, and stretching into the first half of 2022, I worked diligently towards these objectives. I cleaned up my perspective issues, the new beginning was getting rave reviews, and most importantly, after a lot of painstaking work, I ended my quest for a slim word count around 153k words. My compromise was that I left in two backstory chapters that I was coming around to the idea of cutting, which would have saved me another 7-8k words. I decided to leave them in for the moment, just to see what the editor thought.

So, there I was in late spring 2022, ready to go for a second time. I found an editor who had actually worked as an agent as well, a perfect fit for me, and hired them to read my manuscript and then meet with me afterwards to discuss their thoughts. Many freelance editors offer editorial services, but I was laser focused on simply getting feedback about my readiness for querying.

I sent the manuscript off, extremely confident that this time I had nailed it. The manuscript had come together brilliantly. Feedback from a couple beta readers was great again. It had been tightened up significantly and felt like a roller coaster ride from start to end. I dreamed about how well the conversation was going to go and just how impressed the editor was going to be.  

Everything was great, right up until the day before the call. I was suddenly nervous. I didn’t know what the structure of the call was going to look like, and figured I should prepare some questions to ask them, just in case they mostly opened it to me to drive the conversation. The more I started to rack my brain about the questions I had about my manuscript, the more the doubts started to flow out of me that I had never consciously considered before. They must have been there all along, I just got great at ignoring them.

I eventually broke my questions up into 8 topics. I worried about whether I jumped around PoVs too liberally, especially in brief little sprints during action scenes. Conversely, I wondered if I was too focused on my main character, especially early on, and whether I should incorporate more looks at other characters in the first half of the book, rather than just brief asides before returning to my primary main character. I worried about chapter 1 again, was it too long before we got to the point? I worried about the final chapter, it felt like it should be a denouement, but it had a surprise action scene and I wondered if it felt too disjointed. I worried about the backstory chapters that rip the reader out of the current narrative. I worried about a cutaway I did for three or four pages to tell a folktale rendition of a local legend. I worried my ultimate antagonist for the climactic scenes was underwhelming and underdeveloped, thrown in way too late in the book. But mostly, I worried that the second half of the book, the part I slaved away on in 2020, no longer worked with the setup and promises of the first half that had been slowly cultivated over the decade prior.

That was the moment when it hit me. This was not going to be a victory lap. In fact, I didn’t even really need this editorial review. I already knew it wasn’t good enough and I already knew what I needed to do. Still, I went into it hopeful that maybe I was just being too harsh on myself. The end result was… eye opening in many ways.

First of all, the feedback they had for my plot and characters was almost a 100% point for point match to the issues I had detailed the day before. This was gratifying at least in a way. I could trust myself that I actually did know what I needed to do. I wasn’t a ship adrift at sea with no way of getting home.

Secondly, they praised the mechanical aspects of my manuscript. In fact, I was told it was one of the cleanest, most well edited manuscripts they had ever received. This was a huge weight off my shoulders, as I had long worried whether my writing style, and editing efforts, were actually up to the standards of professionals in the industry.

Lastly, they raised one extremely interesting point. It wasn’t just that my beginning was not making the right promises. I was told to consider whether my beginning was even starting in the right spot at all. This blew my mind. Up until this point, I had made tons of changes and edited the heck out of things. But, I had never actually reworked plot in this way before. I had never considered that maybe I should change the entire foundation of my characters, change the entire timeline, change who is present where and what the motivations are for kicking things off. It was mind boggling, and made every cent that went into this review worth it.

So now, we finally are closing in on current day. I was once again drained after this whole process, and took a few months off. But by fall 2022, I was back at it, outlining again. This took a lot longer than previous drafts, as I was rethinking a ton of foundational stuff that I had been building off of for the greater part of a decade. Eventually though, I felt confident enough to start, and by November, I was setting out to write a third edition of this manuscript. Starting with a brand new introduction, from a brand new character’s perspective.

I won’t go into things much more. I am currently four completed chapters into this effort. I will detail the changes between this draft and the last in another post, talking more about what I’ve learned. Some of the changes to my process now include bringing in beta readers early and often. I used to dump completed drafts on people without much warning. Now, I’m sending out one chapter at a time to get much more immediate feedback. If you read all the way to the bottom of this post, you are exactly the type of person I would love to work with. Please do reach out and let me know if you’d like to beta read this new draft.

So, where do we go from here? I’m immensely proud of the new beginning so far, and I’m excited, though also intimidated, by what will be required from here. It’s one thing to write a new part of a manuscript from scratch, but working in all these changes to sections that won’t be rewritten is almost more daunting. Lots and lots of small modifications and edits will be required. Keep an eye on the website. I do plan on finally utilizing my progress bars to update my progress as I go.

Lastly, do expect some additional blog posts from time to time. I have a lot of lessons that I’ve learned so far. I promise, not all of them will be this long. I’d love to talk about things I’ve learned about introductions. The three act structure. Book structure as a whole. Character writing and perspective. Foreshadowing and promises. All these sorts of interesting things. They won’t be every week, they might not even be every month. But, it certainly won’t be one post every two years anymore. I’m settling into the idea that this is how things will be for the long haul.

So, thanks for sticking with me. I know this has been a long journey, and I’m immensely grateful for the support of my friends and family during this process. I can’t wait until I can proudly say that I’ve moved beyond this initial stage of creation. Until then, however, I’ll detail the process here. I hope to see you then!

In lieu of a comments section, please feel free to tweet at me if you have any thoughts on this post. Normally I would link a specific tweet you could reply to pointing to this post, but given this is a more personal post, I'm not going to promote it directly from twitter this time.

Well, I didn't expect to be sitting here, writing this, when the year 2020 began. There are times in one’s life that feel a bit like defining moments, and in a lot of ways, this past year has been that to me. Sure, there were the lows. Early on, March, April, and May felt tense and draining. I was constantly bombarded by defeatist, negative news. Refreshing websites every ten minutes just to see the latest frenzied half-truth repeated ad nauseam. It was stressful, draining, and well, just made it hard to get out of bed some days.

Nothing better exemplified this than a more than one-minute-long video I took of myself, alone in my apartment, spinning around and zooming in and out nonsensically on things like a bottle of Purell, a glass of water, a cut up t-shirt improvised into a mask, my wireless mouse, and any other things I kept on my desk. All this, while singing my heart out along to the Wahaha song. I do regret a bit that this video no longer exists. Nothing could summarize quite as well this strange, strange mental space we had all found ourselves in.  

By May I knew this couldn’t continue for me. I removed Twitter from my phone. I unsubscribed from any subreddit even tangentially related to news. I turned off the tv during the day. Within a week, I felt like myself again. My anxiety disappeared. Stress related heartburn and stomach problems also vanished. I was sleeping well; my back wasn’t hurting. I felt like I could live again.

With all this suddenly free time, I turned my attention to my writing (Well, and some video games I’d been meaning to catch up on, but then my 3DS broke…). I had been noodling on one particular fantasy story, that would eventually become Toric, casually since college. I’d find myself going to Starbucks to write for three or four hours on a lazy Sunday occasionally, or getting some motivation to put in a few hours after work here or there. It was just for me. Something fun to do without much of a plan at all.

It was at some point around 2015 or 2016 that I started to take this whole thing a bit more seriously. I sat down and outlined for several weeks. I solidified characters, cities, countries, races, worlds, and came up with a plan. I threw out the 100+ pages I’d written and started from scratch.

It was character backstories first. I spent a year writing intricate and detailed vignettes of each of my main characters in scenes that fell years earlier in my timeline than my planned chapter 1. I thought that if I didn’t understand where my characters came from, how could I hope to write them in the present? Well, it worked. Kind of. I was excited now for the story, and while my pace of work improved, all kinds of barriers sprung up as well. I was traveling every week for work at this point, and most nights all I wanted to do was throw something on to watch or just crawl into bed at whichever hotel I found myself at.

I chipped away at the thing though. Eventually making it about halfway through the story before 2020 derailed everything.

Well, after regaining my sense of normalcy in May, or as close to it as I could find given the current situation, I decided I wanted to do something to take back my agency from the world. So I wrote. It wasn’t nonstop (until the final week or so that is), but I set aside a good amount of time in my evenings and weekends to actually, finally, dedicate to this project.

It’s surprising how much you can accomplish even in a relatively small amount of time. Even though I was limited to just time in the evening after work, I was flying through the story compared to my earlier efforts. By October, only four months and change later, I found I had matched my output from the previous four years combined. By November, the story was finished, revised, and sent out to beta readers for feedback.

I don’t know what I was expecting. Up to that point I had received zero feedback from anyone on my work. I told myself to prepare for the worst. I roleplayed conversations while I lay awake at night, imagining how I could best accept negative feedback. I started brainstorming ideas for other books in other worlds once it became clear this one was a bust. Oh sure, I also dreamed about doing huge book signings with legions of fans lined up (who doesn’t?), but this was about as fulfilling for me as dreaming about winning the lottery. Fun, but ultimately just a pointless diversion and far from a realistic outcome. 

But, as initial feedback came in, it was actually, shockingly… pretty positive. I couldn’t believe it. I went into my first beta reader review sessions armed with several plans I could roll out when I was told that the book inevitably needed to be rethought. I could cut 1/3 to 1/2 of what I had written and turn the book into just part one of a larger book. I felt like I was teasing a lot of things, but not answering enough questions, and worried endlessly that the work as it was would feel unsatisfying on its own. I was also prepared to pitch another idea about writing a concurrent narrative from an alternative character’s point of view that could run simultaneously alongside what I had already written. I also had a long list of scenes that I thought I could cut or rework to slim down the story and keep it more gripping. I was prepared to take an axe to the thing.

Well, my early readers were horrified at the thought. One even said “That would be a tragedy” when I proposed cutting a large swath of material. There were minor nits, but overall, they liked it. Overall, they said it was good. Overall, they wanted more.

Well, for the first time in my life, I found I was not just doing this for myself. It’s a scary thought, but also one that excites me like no other. By January 2021, I was researching agents, query letters, and all manner of publishing related topics. All of that culminated in the existence of this blog post you are reading now, on this new website that has become the first technical side project I’ve ever actually fully completed.

If you are reading this then I assume it is probably long past the day when I actually first posted this blog. I can't even pretend to know what life will hold for me in your now. Maybe this website is sitting abandoned in some forgotten corner of the internet while I just can’t bring myself to pull the plug out of nostalgia. Maybe I did actually manage to make it happen with Toric. Maybe it was years later with another book. All I know is that through all the chaos and pain that was this past year of 2020, I was able to do something pretty dang cool for myself. So, here’s to that! 

Thanks for reading to the end. This probably wasn't the most interesting blog for you, but it felt right to me for a beginning. I don’t have too many firm plans for my blog at the moment, but I do expect to update regularly on Wednesdays to start out. I think I’ll be focusing half on the craft of writing and half on more personal topics. I want to discuss my thoughts on topics like characters, settings, plot, and so on. I also am a regular listener to the Writing Excuses Podcast, which is a great resource for fiction writers of all kinds, so maybe I’ll post some of my thoughts when an episode really captures my interest.

Things aren’t going to be too serious here all the time though. If I watch or play a particularly good game, anime, tv show, movie, or something, then I probably am going to want to discuss it, at least from a writing and character perspective. I’ll try to keep my sports rants to a minimum, but no promises there.

And who knows, maybe when this so-called Backstreet Boys Reunion Tour comes to an end, I might actually have interesting and new things happening in my day-to-day life to write about. Don't let your memes be dreams!

Well, there comes my website, right on cue, telling me an exception was encountered as I went to save this blog post. I guess the whole website thing is still somewhat a work in progress. Please excuse me while I debug this thing when I really should be just heading to bed. See ya!