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I read through my story once, fixing up the grammar, filling out the continuity, rewriting a few sections that obviously needed it.  From there I wrote up some ‘artifacts’, basically small out-of-story vignettes that flesh out the story a bit without being part of the strict narrative.  Because I have three plot lines I broke the story in three and read each plotline from beginning to end.  Within that edit I polished the chapters and tried to make them each exciting, worth reading, well-written etc.

Now I’m on to my final beginning-to-end, nothing skipped, edit.  This is, hopefully, the edit where I sit back and enjoy the story.  I’m not sure it’ll quite work out like that, but it’s coming together.  Once I finish that I’ll have a few friends read it and then…

Well, we’ll see.  One thing at a time, eh?

Until next time, Adieu!

I’m nearly the completion of my novel. I’ve got a last few chapters to finish up before I have a rough draft done. From there the long editing road starts, but the ‘hard work’ is done, at least, that’s what I tell myself. (I don’t think anyone considers editing easy.) Lately I’ve been emailing chapters here and there to friends to look over. Gmail has taken the opportunity to flood me with advertizements tailored to me: mostly self-publishing houses and vanity presses.

The tag lines are always so appealing: “Get published now!’, ‘Have you book read by a professional editor without the agent’, ‘Become an author’. As I get closer to needing to find a publisher or an agent these ’services’ seem so great, but, aside from largely being scams, they also defeat the purpose. Anyone can write something. I’ve written hundreds, thousands, millions of words. Very few of them are worth being published, worth being given to the world, worth asking people to pay money for. I’m not a paid blogger because my random semi-frequent musings aren’t up to that level of quality and most of my stories aren’t either. A few are, I hope anyone, and I intend to prove it by getting them published in an editing medium. I want them to complete against all the other author’s out there, in my genre, and be of a higher quality. It is that competition that validates my writing as being worth being read and what makes publishing both so hard and so worthy a goal.

Vanity presses are a shortcut and a dangerous one at that. Publishing is a business built around selling books. Vanity publishers are built around reading fees and editing contracts. They have no stake in selling the book, so they don’t. They play on the best intentions of a eager author and leave them something that is by and large unsellable, unmarketable, and disappointing.

http://www.aeonix.com/vanity.htm: an article on why they’re scams

http://everything2.com/node/606645: another one with a short list of vanity presses.

http://www.sfwa.org/BEWARE/vanitypublishers.html: another great list with resources for researching publishers.

http://selfpublishing.suite101.com/article.cfm/avoiding_selfpublishing_scams: Avoiding publishing scams

Hope these help! Wish me luck in getting published!

First: the Link.

Second: What is it?

It’s an open call for ‘hint fiction’ submissions.  They define hint fiction as stories of 25 words or less that suggest a larger story.  It’s a pretty cool writing game and starting August 1st (ending August 31th) they are taking up to three submissions via email for an anthology scheduled for next year.  The caveat, you can only send two submissions unless you link to the their submission guide.

Here it is again. Hint Fiction Submission Guidelines!

I don’t have my submissions prepared yet, but I’ve got a few ideas rolling around.  Good fun!

I’m over two thirds done. I’ve got around ten chapters left.

The end is always the worst. Starting out the ideas are fresh. If it doesn’t work, so what, it was fun to play around with. A hundred thousand words later the doubts are a little more poignant. It’d be a shame if the last few months were really just ‘practice’. Is each chapter effective? Is the story effective? Is it entertaining? I keep saying that’s a job for editing, but there’s only so much that can be salvaged. Is the story any good? We’ll see…after I finish it.

It is a cool feeling though to almost have a manuscript done. A hundred thousand words printed feels hefty no matter what font you use. There’s a sense of accomplishment in holding a brick of paper that has your own words on it.

The next few weeks will be interesting. Once I actually get the whole thing done I’m taking a few weeks off. I’ll be reading the last couple of years worth of Nebula and Hugo award winners as well as The Secret Atlas trilogy by Michael A. Stackpole. I might also pick up some more research books on future technologies for my story. Once I’ve, hopefully, mostly forgotten what I’ve written it’ll be editing time. And well, that’ll be the summer. Cheers!

I was recently made aware of AgentQuery.com, a resource for finding publishing agents. I haven’t used them myself (yet anyway. Book is almost half done!), but I like the tag line: Find the Agent that will find you a Publisher.

Some day I want to be on this list.

Apparently I’m not the only one writing articles about writing. Go figure.

The Examiner is New York specific site, but writing is writing everywhere. There aren’t many articles yet (an interesting one on John Updike, a few informative ones about writing groups), but I look forward to reading more.

I don’t do much freelance writing (wish I did), but here’s a pretty good list of freelance resources.

And here’s one more that’s not on the list: Helium Marketplace.

Movies have trailers and posters. Songs have music videos and radio play. TV shoes have commercials and posters. Radio stations have prize giveaways and billboards. Cars have billboards and commercials. Houses have real estate listings and sign posts. Everything has advertizing

…

Except books. By and large the only advertizing books get is, at best, a few cover shots on a stand at the front of a book store. With the rare exception of a Harry Potter with got news coverage, there’s no advertizing to bring people into the bookstores in the first place. People looking for books go and get what they’re interested in. Everyone else lives their lives never knowing what or if anything has been published at all.

I’m not a publisher and I can’t change the industry, but it’s hardly any surprise that the average book only makes, at best, a few thousand dollars when it has to go up against millions of dollars worth of better known and better advertized competition. This website is more small attempt at breaking into the publishing world, encouraging readers, and getting the word out, but there are plenty of books passing me by as well.

Should publishers buy radio and TV spots? Should book signings and readers be a bigger feature? What about the internet? It’ll be big for sure. Maybe talk spots in podcasts? All possibilities, but I haven’t seen any of them. With all this choice, what does everyone think the best solution is?