Nick Bryan

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How many drafts? Definitely more than zero…

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Absolute ZERO?

Today, after considerable striving, I finished one of the many readthroughs I am doing on The Novel. This was one part of a raft of edits, which together constitute a third draft – more details on those here if you’re interested – and I’m hopefully within a week or two of finishing the whole damn lot. After that, I may let some other people read it.

The whole draft-counting system is a very personal thing really – you’d think the criteria for a first, second and third draft would be easy to define, but in reality you might as well ask a writer to define the concept of being. In fact, that might be quicker. (But I would say that, I have a Philosophy degree.)

In general, I’ll use whatever approach works for me at the time. One numbering idiosyncrasy I’ve never quite found a use for, though, is Draft Zero.

Draft Zero – Non-achievement non-locked?

I believe the idea of draft zero might’ve started up post-NaNoWriMo – people were writing fast, getting a text out but at a quality they didn’t feel happy naming as a first draft. So, to achieve mind/life tranquility, they designated it zero and advanced to first draft once they’d done rewrites/expansions.

We all want that peace and quiet, I know I do. Personally, though, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I don’t know if that’s just a subconscious desire for order and logical numbering. It perhaps doesn’t help that I have never managed to produce a whole draft of anything within a NaNo – it always requires three-to-four months either side, stubbornly keeping going until I have something full.

And once I’ve got a full book-length text, even if I know immediately it has issues, that’s the first draft. If there were scenes or whole subplots missing, maybe it would be a draft zero. Or if I planned to literally start from scratch and rewrite the entire thing. But even then, I’d probably go for draft 0.5 because then it means something exists, y’know? Numerically?

I think that’s why I never took to the whole zero concept. Having done the work, I want to acknowledge it a little. In a similar vein – I could’ve refused to award myself the Second Draft achievement until I had something I was willing to show people, but it was a fuckton of work. It genuinely produced a much different, better manuscript and, when doing a single task that takes the best part of a year, I like rewarding milestones in a way I can enjoy, rather than nullifying them.

And to think, there was never a WriteBlog #0…

But, as I’ve amply demonstrated, all this is just why it doesn’t work for my personal mindset. If designating your first runthrough as draft zero serves as amazing motivation, makes it feel like more of a blank slate for future greatness, then more power to you.

Could be I’m just warped after years reading superhero comics, watching Marvel and DC publish issue #0 before issue #1, for no reason other than first issues always sell more, and this way the series effectively gets two of them. (Hobson & Choi #0! Never coming soon!)

But I’m rambling. Maybe the reason I’m dreaming of rattling down early novel efforts is because it’s been six months since I churned one out and I miss it. Still, in a week or so, I’ll have officially finished my third draft on the current and be one step closer to doing that again. In the time it takes me to get there, maybe I’ll have embraced the healing powers of draft zero.(That probably will not happen.)

My Writing Process meme – The truth behind Hobson & Choi

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So, for the first time ever on this blog (WOO), I have done one of those answer-some-questions-then-nominate-people memes. Because, y’know, why not? Lets me talk a bit about Hobson & Choi, which I always enjoy doing. For anyone who ever wanted a straight-forward pitch for the whole story, here it is.

Thanks to Lisa Goll of London Writer’s Cafe for nominating me, you can see her pass at the same questions over at her blog.

But now, on with the ME.

1. When and where is the story set?

Hobson & Choi is set in London, in The Now of the early 2010s. To be precise, it’s set in a criminal undercurrent that seems to exist just below the surface of almost everything. Seems to be nothing in London I can’t point to and say “Ah, but what if it was evil?”

2. What can you say about the main characters?

The main characters are John Hobson, middle-aged private eye with dark past, and Angelia Choi, slightly withdrawn but well-meaning teenage girl with… well, a past of some kind. They come together after she asks for a work experience placement at his agency, and end up using his expertise in turning over scumbags to investigate more modern crimes than he was bothering to find.

Although John Hobson, the world-weary old bastard, finds all these newfangled dirty-dealings rather fey and annoying. There’s a lot of bickering at first, but no doubt they’ll eventually discover they have more in common than they first thought.

3. What is the main conflict?

H&C has been one of those stories that has revealed its true self slowly as it went along. The main conflict seems to be between the slick new world and the rather grimy old one it’s built on top of, as helpfully embodied by Hobson and Choi themselves.

And more directly, the series of crimes the heroes are presented with provides a helpful immediate conflict. Can they solve the murder/find the kidnap victim/uncover the conspiracy? All the while dealing with their personal issues and secrets mounting in the background?

And if all that has enticed you to give Hobson & Choi a go, you can wait a bit longer for the upcoming definitive self-published edition of Case One.

The Infectious Phase

The lucky people nominated by me to carry this on…

  1. Frances Pauli, fellow JukePop author of The Earth Tigers.
  2. Alastair JR Ball, author of the non-JukePop webserial The First 500.
  3. Julianne Benford, book blogger and aspiring YA writer.

Why can’t I work at home? – A video study in writing and procrastination

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So, for a while now, I’ve found myself unable to get much work done in my home. I’m not sure why, my procrastination levels just spiked, but I’ve spent ages going to a local cafe as a result. Loads of time, loads of money, but I’ve also achieved a fuckton of writing, so maybe it’ll just have to be fair enough.

Anyway, long story short, I fancied doing another video blog after last month’s moderately fun experiment, so I have created the below. A short piece exploring that very question: why can’t I work at home?

And for anyone interested: yes, that is my workspace. Judge away. (Watch it on YouTube here.)

So, can you no longer work in your house? Is it for the same reasons as me? Feel free to form a sufferer support group in the comments, I’ll break up any fights.

Hobson & Choi Self-Publishing Attempt – An Early Update

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Like most of my big announcements, this one was somewhat buried in various podcasts and the London Book Fair blog post a month ago, so here it is up top: I am planning Hobson & Choi self-published editions, collecting the series storyline-by-storyline, with proper covers, editing, extra material and general joy.

The first of these should be out in the summer, for both e-readers and paper-readers. The second… hopefully by the end of the year, but that could end up being optimistic.

So, as I embark on this adventure, I thought I’d blog about it a little. These will be on an irregular basis rather than every week, as there won’t always be anything to report. And yes, it is taking a fuckton of willpower to not call this Self-Pub Update #1 and start numbering them, but I’ve only just made myself stop doing that with the writing blogs. Must be strong.

Anyway. How’s it going with the self-publishing, Nick?

EDITS EDITS EDITS

I’ll spare you lengthy descriptions of my editing process, as that’s another thing you can get extensively in other posts. Suffice to say, the knowledge this will be going public in the near future does focus the mind. After I went to all those self-pub seminars at London Book Fair, it became clear that editing perhaps wasn’t something I should do all by myself.

After all, I wrote Hobson & Choi, edited it before publishing to Jukepop, yet again before recording the podcasts, did another pass recently to get it into a book-shape with longer, more substantial chapters. I’m fairly close to this material. I know it better than I know the back of my hands, because I stare straight pass my limbs to the monitor. See picture to left for an illustrated metaphor of how my hands are kept in darkness by the shining glory behind them.

So, as everyone advised in the seminars, I engaged the service of an actual editor. Sent the manuscript off to them a week or so back, and the moment I get it back and have to face their opinions is one thing I’ll definitely blog about here. I’m only a little scared.

But the story needs to be the best it can be, I gotta compete with not just other self-pubs but traditionally published authors who get editorial feedback from agents and/or publishers. Mustn’t do this half-arsed, no matter how much my bank account sometimes wants me to.

MORE MORE MORE

As mentioned up top, we have extra material, to entice fans of the original serial into picking up the book anyway. This takes the form of an extra short story, set in the Hobson & Choi universe (well, it’s mostly one city so far) and expanding on some minor characters. To be precise, it takes place behind the scenes in the criminal pub The Left Hand.

This story exists in second draft form and I’m pretty pleased with it. Hopefully I’ll become even happier as edits continue. And in terms of providing even more value to existing readers: it’s entirely possible these editors will tear my text apart so much, it’ll basically be a whole new story.

JUDGE A BOOK BY THIS

Lastly (for now), the other thing I decided I shouldn’t, couldn’t and wouldn’t do myself: making a cover for the book. Not that the existing H&C cover (on the right there) hasn’t served me well, but I don’t know shit about graphic design.

So I commissioned the nice people at Design For Writers, and it looks like we’ve got something. They come highly recommended if you’re after a book cover. It was a tough process at times and I needed to make intimidating decisions, including a new title for the whole first storyline (eek), but I think we’re there.

Which means I get to pull off one of those cover reveals all the cool self-pub authors do. I’m going to put it off for a few weeks, because we’re still months out from actually publishing, but trust me, it’s worth it. Or get me a drink and I’ll probably show you on my phone.

Don’t have to wait for me to drink the drink, I’ll happily give it up just in exchange for a pint existing.

Signing Off…

So that’s where we are with the Hobson & Choi self-publishing project. More updates will follow when something else tangibly happens. Questions? Worries? Suggestions for my marketing strategy? Comment below!

I AM NOT A NUMBER (but my novel editing progress is and I can’t stop looking at it)

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This week, threatened as recently as last week, I launched into the third draft of my constantly-in-progress novel. This is the phase where I trawl through the entire text of the book, picking at individual words and trying to get it to the stage where I’m willing to share it with my elite team of beta readers.

ASIDE: If you want to join said elite team, email me and volunteer, or contact me using any other method available to you. All viable humans considered, especially those able to read a book in 1-2 months and provide feedback more detailed than “Yeah, it was okay.” Beta reading likely to commence in early-to-mid June.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I launched into the editing process, and quickly settled on a method. For more details on said method and its implications for my location, read on…

Editalactus – Mincer Of Words

In a bid to give the words a thorough beating, my “third pass” will actually consist of three passes – one in the cafe with music on, picking at the language and doing any final bits of continuity straightening necessary. After that, I read the whole thing out – yes, with my voice at full volume – which usually serves to find clunky phrasings and stupid repeated words.

Last of all, I run this version through the Hemingway web app, which I think I’ve mentioned here before. This provides one last suggestion of overlong clunky sentences, letting me snip a few more chunks away.

So, that’s what I’m doing. I have nearly a hundred thousand words to feed through this mincer, and in the last week, I’ve managed a third of the novel. Not bad. Probably helps that I’ve spent three whole days in that time doing almost nothing else.

With this in mind, I might be on track to finish by the end of the month, then I can get some opinions and work out how much more work is needed. Must admit, I’ve already found myself eyeing up some bigger changes to the first third, but I’m tempted to let a few other people read it first. Be good to finally get a wider view on this thing rather than keep picking and picking.

Sit still, you idiot.

The down-side of the above-described editing process: I can’t do all of it in the cafe. Specifically, the part where I read out the text to myself. Doesn’t really work in public, people give you odd looks.

For a year or so now, I’ve basically done all my writing in the same Walthamstow cafe. Working at home just hasn’t been productive for me, I’m too prone to wandering off and procrastinating. But I’ve had to force myself through it this time, and although there are still a few hours that got lost in the whirl of talking to myself, the job is getting done.

Maybe one day, I’ll be able to work at home when I don’t have to. Might save me a few quid on coffee, at least.

So yeah, it’s getting done. When I laid out the target of finishing this edit by the end of May, I thought I was being self-punishingly optimistic, but perhaps not? We’ll see if this progress continues in subsequent weeks, I suppose.

WRITEBLOG EDITORIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

You may note I’ve stopped numbering my blogs about writing, as there was more or less no point. Sorry to anyone upset by this. I’m a slave to public approval, so feel free to argue the case for numbering in the comments…

Is it me or is there a COMPLETED SECOND draft in here? (WriteBlog #24)

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Unfortunately, the pun in the title doesn’t really work, as that kind of draft is spelt draught. But enough self-sabotage.

This week, on Wednesday to be precise, I completed the second draft of the novel I’ve been blogging about for ages. So yeah, hit my self-imposed deadline of the end of April by about six hours, go team. Now, this doesn’t mean it’s time to show it to publishing professionals, or indeed other humans at all, but it is a major chunk of work finished, and I’m going to number it as second draft anyway, simply because it gives me a feeling of progress.

So what exactly do I mean by second draft? And what’s next if not showing it to others? Time now for a little pause-and-take-stock in the editing process.

“It’s like running a comb through the forest.”

The second draft, as I’m defining it, involves going through the entire first draft text and trying to turn it into a coherent item, which you could conceivably go through from beginning to end and understand. I’m not saying every detail will be correct or the writing will be beautiful – in fact, that definitely isn’t true – but I have a thing that resembles a story.

More excitingly, it more or less resembles the story I wanted to tell when I started this whole process.In practise, this involved re-ordering or re-writing a lot of scenes, jamming new segments into them, not to mention the heartbreaking deletion of bits which no longer work. My deleted offcuts folder for this project is a terrifying 43,924 words – a lot of work to accept that you may never use.

(Well, there’s one whole deleted chapter which may find a home in some future related project, as I still like it, but the story has shifted and left the poor thing homeless. But aside from that, yup, it’s all being launched into the void to die.)

But at least it sounds like I’ve done something. Plenty of new writing, interesting thoughts about old work, gratifying sense of creation. The best editing experience I’ve yet had. I won’t be showing the first or second drafts to anyone, but one definitely advances the other.So, what’s next?

“It’s like fighting off an ant invasion using a sledgehammer.”

Well, the detailed editing, which I call the third draft because, again, it’s nice to feel like you’re achieving something. The bit where I go through the text in a finer fashion, potentially more than once, trying to get all the sentences to look and sound nice, spot the details which contradict each other, ruthlessly eliminate words like actually and finally which I use every five minutes and are never fucking worth it.

In short, yes, this is the fiddly part many non-writers assume I’m doing when I first start editing. If only.It also includes the always-entertaining section where I read the whole thing out loud to myself, alone in my house, hoping to spot awkward sentence construction and over-used words. The current manuscript is only 94,000 words so hopefully that won’t take too many thousands of hours.

I still live in hope this won’t be a huge chore. The last editing section was surprisingly pleasant, as it was still writing basically, but this really is word-by-word text examination. I’m going to try and push through it relatively quickly to avoid that being too much of a problem – in my dreams, I’m finished by the end of May. In reality, the end of June might be more realistic.

And then. Well, then we really are ready for other people to read the thing. And I’m sure I’ll talk about that when the time comes.

Tune in next week to find out how much/little of a boring task this third drafting really is. And then come back the week after that to see me change my mind.