Writing Your First Book, Pt. 1

A couple of days ago I submitted the second draft of Fencing Academy to my publisher. A day after that, I saw the cover art (which is REALLY cool!) Needless to say, I can't wait to share it with you all. I thought I'd write a few thoughts down on writing a book. Perhaps it would be helpful for those of you out there thinking about writing one.

The process of writing says something about you. Not to sound cheesy, you do learn an awful lot about yourself. You discover whether you're a morning or evening person (me, I'm a morning person, though I've always fancied myself a night person), what sort of work flow works best for you, and whether you're a do-it-all-now-and-revise-later person or a make-sure-it's-perfect-then-move-on person.

The late-and-great Kurt Vonnegut reckons there are two types of writers, and he gave funny names to them which I can't remember offhand. The first type writes as quickly as possible before going back and taking a long period of revision. The second type writes slowly and surely, making sure each sentence is perfect before moving on. The good thing about the first type of writer is that they get rough drafts out very quickly. The good thing about the second type is that they don't really have to revise. There is no "superior" method, it's just what works for you. I had always thought I was in the first group. It turns I'm in the second group.

The point is that you don't know these things until you find them out yourself. Until you learn them, it's very difficult to follow projects through to completion. I think that's the value in starting big projects you may or may not finish, you find this stuff out. And as you find them out, you learn, finally, how to follow through. So if you're the sort with a billion aborted projects, don't despair. You're doing the right thing, keep aborting projects until you get the hang of things.

The next part of this series will come before publication, and it will go deeper into challenges you might face. You'll get to see the cover art before then, hopefully. The cover is so good I feel a little inferior to it... I only hope the story is as good as the art!