The achievement of writing and publishing through self publishing (teaser: this is the first thing I’d do differently and plan on doing differently) my first book Draegon Taymerx is a milestone in my career no doubt. I wouldn’t trade the experience including the pride of having the first baby and all.
However, there’s the good old cliche that hindsight is 20/20. Anyone who hasn’t been through refiners fire vital to the maturity of an author themselves could never possibly imagine all that I have learned. The painful part of all this is that now I want to finish my second book and release it way more than I ever wanted to do so with my first book.
This is due to the fact that I’ve seen the light–a vision clear as day. I now understand the path of what’s required to be successful. I feel it in my bones. I have no doubt that my future’s so bright, well, let’s dispense with all the cliches.
What I’ve learned came through various sources: books that I received from my greatest moral support–my parents, writing workshops, a podcast called writing excuses, and last but most definitely far from being the least is harsh criticism on my writing.
The funny thing is after my awakening, the next time I began reading a novel, something inside of me was itching for a red pen. I coined a new saying that seem to be inherently true, “Every writer an editor.”
Anyways, I haven’t come to the point yet, have I? What would I do differently? The first thing that I hinted at above is the fact that there really isn’t a shortcut. Self publishing is not the way to go.
There is, of course, exceptions. Maybe you’re some big cheese like Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin, Martha Steward, Oprah, etc. Or maybe you’re a great expert on marketing, so you know how to best sell your self published work. Maybe your targeting a niche like a parent who wants to publish the magnificent work of their autistic child, so your partnering with an organization that would be appropriate for that sort of thing. Or maybe none of this matters, because your not thinking big in the first place, but rather your just creating a sentimental family gem to be passed down the generations.
So I admit self publishing is for some, but not everyone. The point is, it’s not for me. It was tempting to make this post a bash against the company I self published Draegon Taymerx through, but I’ll refrain.
Secondly, is something I find so important now I’ll repeat it thrice–revision, revision, revision. Don’t get me wrong, I did quite a bit of revision on Draegon Taymerx, but I’ve come to learn it wasn’t enough.
How does one make it enough? I would submit that the key to this is realizing the readers of your work fall into two categories: those who read it to critique it and everybody else. To put it bluntly, when anyone of your friends or family request to read your work before it is published, tell to keep their grimy fingers away and get lost. It’ll do you no service to have them read it. You, rather, need readers of category one. You need those who aren’t afraid to hurt your feeling to give you the truth you don’t want to hear. Your baby is butt-ugly.
I said I would refrain from bashing the company I did Draegon Taymerx through, but I need to say something. They were not category one readers. Did they tell me I was wrong to have an epic fantasy be only around 65,000 words? No! Did they tell me not to start it with a completely dull exposition for a prologue? No! Did they tell me I’m telling to much and that I need more showing? No! Is all these gaping scars sticking out to me now like a sore thumb with all I now understand of writing craft? Oh yeah, you better believe it.
My new plan is a multi-tiered approach to editing. First step, write the book. Second step, revise, revise, revise. Third step, amateur critique with revisions based on what I agree from that. I’m planning on using this social critique site called critiquecircle to do this step. Forth step, the polishing spit shine with a professional freelance editor. I found someone awesome for step four. Unfortunately, I’m still on step one were I still need to finish writing my work.
Of course, after all is said and done, it is not all said and done. After all, when successfully submitting the manuscript to a publisher, it’ll be in the hands of their editors to tell you more stuff to fix.
Thus we see, I have some real work cut out for me when it comes to publishing number two, the milestone of the true champions. The journey will be both dreadful and wonderful at the same time.
