Now that I am about to release my first book, it is with a mix of emotions: excitement, nervousness, joy, fear, and everything in-between. While I dragged my feet to get a cover (shout out to the amazing Tommy Arnold), took inordinately long writing my first draft, put off editing the first draft as long as I could, avoided getting the manuscript to an editor, stalled on actually implementing the edits from the editor, the day of reckoning is finally soon upon us!
January 18th, 2020, my first book comes out! Ahhhh!
I want to give you some lessons that I’ve learned on this multi-year journey.
Know your goal with every project. Some projects exist with the hope of making money, and some projects exist with the hope of pushing us in a particular way, like trying out different plotting methods or multiple viewpoint stories or fragmented time-shifting plots. Knowing your goal gives you a chance to actually meet your goal. My goal for this book was to create a professional product that I am proud of, which I did. But imagine if you didn’t have a goal, then how could you ever be satisfied? There are many things that are set up to take down the bruised ego of an author such as the dreaded and ever-present imposter syndrome, give yourself a chance to be happy.
Keep it simple. Mary Robinette Kowal mentioned on the most recent episode of Writing Excuses that with the first project you tackle seriously, you should keep it simple. I couldn’t agree more. That is why I kept this project single-POV, with linear storytelling and a limited third-person viewpoint. Keeping it simple doesn’t mean you can’t write beautiful, amazing, award-winning things. It just means it is easier for you when you need to go in and do editing. When a beta reader informed me that the back half of the book wasn’t working, I completely rewrote it, and I was thankful that the book was told linearly. If it was more than fixing the ending, it could have meant an entire overhaul. And, especially when you are writing your first book, you want to setup the least amount of roadblocks possible in order to finish it.
Keep the cast of characters small. When you are a new writer, and you want to emulate your favorite tv show, movie, or book, it can be very alluring to have as many characters as you can think of inhabiting your world. This instinct is excellent, and, of course, you will need the occasional spear holder. That’s not what I am talking about; I am talking about the main characters and the supporting characters. If you keep the cast of characters tight, you give them each room to be real characters with dreams, desires, foibles, and growth arcs. You can drill down into the different interpersonal relationships. You can go back in revision and add ticks and quirks to each of them. That’s not to say you can’t do this with more characters, but if you have fewer characters, it won’t seem daunting to go back and add these interesting tidbits to everyone. Another benefit of a smaller cast is more page-time with the characters you do have, which gives the reader more time to fill in the characters themselves. A book is one half of what an author puts into it, and the other half is what the reader puts into it.
Do an outline. I am so thankful I had a rudimentary outline before I tackled the project. The first time you sit down to work on a project, you are so excited, and it is oh-so-tempting to get in there and start making words happen. I’ve been there before, but I wanted to finish this project, so I knew an outline would be my best shot at that. In checking my original notebook, I saw that I had three pages of outlining that I bet took me about 3 hours over the course of a couple of days to get together. Looking at it, I can see the seeds of the scenes that developed. The first thing I did was list all the period-appropriate names. I went back over and circled the ones I liked. I made a list of all the characters that I thought would play a major role in the story. Then I assigned names to the characters in the story. After that, I made a list of all possible scenes that could happen in this story. Then I spent some time trying to arrange them and choosing which would be the best for a climax and which ones felt like tension builders.
Assess the outline. So you have your fancy outline that you spent three hours on. Très awesome! Now you write your first draft. Also, hella awesome! But take a step back, look at every chapter and ask which characters were in each chapter, and which characters were mentioned even if they didn’t appear in each chapter. Is there a character that you thought was super important and imperative to everything but only appeared twice? Was there a character you thought very little of but ended up being everywhere? This concept is a bit of an idea I ported over from Imogen Heap (her documentary on the making of her third album Ellipse is a must-watch for every creative). She said when she is about 85% done with an album, she looks at all tempos and key signatures of her songs and asks what tempo is missing and what key signature is missing and adds songs with those missing components to the album. I did the same thing. I looked at all the chapters in my book and asked what interaction was missing, which characters weren’t getting enough attention. I added about 4 chapters to the book doing this. This method is an excellent way of going in deep with the characters, enriching your story, and making both the world and characters seem well-rounded.
Accept imperfection. You are never going to write the most perfect book ever. If someone did, then what would be the point of the rest of us writing? There is, of course, a stark difference between accepting imperfection and putting out a bad product. And if you ask yourself honestly, you probably know the line between those two things already. As the adage goes, art is never finished, only abandoned. That is going to be the same with your first, second, and fifteenth book. Take a lesson away from your book: what would you do differently if you had a second chance? Remember that and apply it to your next project.
Thank you for reading, and I wish you all the best with your writing journey! Every journey is our own. Hopefully, we can learn from each other. Thank you to all those who helped me with this project!
Feel free to share in the comments any lessons you took away from an early book of yours and how it helped you, or lessons you learned from other authors that helped you!
My first book, Ghostly Chords is available for pre-order on
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B081SBK82Q
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/ghostly-chords-1
You can also follow me on Twitter where I tweet about foreign reality shows, food, and curling.
https://twitter.com/edwardgiordano