Friday, June 2, 2023

Writing #14: An Update

 It has been quite a while since I've talked extensively about writing. I believe I let everyone know in September that I finished a five-year process of editing Code Red. Of course, I knew there was still a lot of work to be done, I handed that copy off to a few beta readers and prayed the reviews would return well. The story was well received, but there were quite a few grammatical errors, and some issues with pacing, tense, and a lack of description. I think I'd be a fantastic scriptwriter, I am unfortunately not Tolkien or George RR Martin. I do not take pages to describe things, this is a fault I am working diligently to fix. I love becoming immersed in a great story, and the way an author describes the characters, the world, etc is the biggest part of that immersion. 

I chose to print and annotate the book as I did with my first large round of edits. That didn't go overly well the first time, but I did manage to make it through. One of my beta readers was kind enough to bring me a printed copy of their own annotations. At Christmas time my father gifted me a Microsoft Surface, I absolutely adore it, and found a wonderful program for annotating documents (Drawboard PDF if you're interested). This week I was able to finish copying my annotations in this program, I was quite excited to finally be on the final draft of this work. I want to publish, it has been quite a long six years on this novel (I started the book on May 1st, 2017), and I am ready to move forward with the story, to work on one of my other many projects. I chose to add a prologue, which I also completed this week, I think it will set the story up in a much better way. I shared it with a couple people, who all seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. 

Now I am in a strange place, I need to work on truly finishing this final draft. This will be tedious work, and will likely end up in many changes I haven't foreseen (it already has, the writer I was in 2017 isn't the writer I am in 2023).  I found that the program I want to use for formatting the final copy is only available on Mac. I did find another PC/Windows friendly program that has very good reviews. Once I have had a decision I'm sure I will share my thoughts. As I am always want to do. In either case, I will be dropping a little money on these types of programs, since I am doing all the editing myself and trying not to invest too much of my finances into publishing my first book this does seem like a need to ensure a higher quality book. I will either learn how to do graphic design for my own covers or invest some money in hiring a cover artist. I do like doing things myself, but I have very little artistic ability, so we will have to see how it goes. I know Canva is a popular program for book covers, and since I am somewhat versed in how to use it that is probably where I will start. 

I don't know if this was an interesting update, but it's better than nothing. I hope I will have good news soon!

Taila Out. 

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