All words presented in this blog are purely opinion, not fact - unless specifically stated otherwise in the post.

Monday 18 February 2013

Writers have it hard... ish.

So I've finished my first run of edits of the short story and I'm going through it now for areas I'd like to be worded better and I'm finding myself wondering how many times published authors go through their work before submitting to their agents. I mean, do they finish writing it, send it off to the agent and get a bunch of edits back? Do they finish the book, re-read it, then send it or do they do, on their ridiculously long 400+ page books what I'm doing on my short story, which is something along the lines of;
  1. Write story.
  2. Edit one; look for plot holes.
  3. Edit two; look for areas that could be worded better and re-word
  4. Edit four; look for spelling/punctuation/grammar problems and fix them
  5. Final read through and send to publishers.
When I was younger I complained abotu books taking ages to come out, but really it's a very lengthly process before the Agent or publisher ever sees it.
This short story for example; I started it  about 2 weeks ago. I finished my first draft about a week ago. I re-read it for plot holes last Wednesday and I'm now re-reading it for wording improvements. (I'm about halfway through). Next I'll read it for spelling and grammar and send it to a couple of friends who will tell me they hate it and I'll shout STFU ITS AWESOME!!! and publish it out of spite- wait, no. I'll get a book cover done (not 100% sure where/how yet but I've got some ideas) and then I'll publish it to Kindle.

And this short story is only 42 pages. most fantasy books, the likes of which I usually read are around 600 pages, maybe a little more maybe a little less but around 15 times the length of my little story which will probably take me a month in total to get on the market.
It usually takes a fantasy author a year maybe 2 to get it out there, at least after the first book. It really isn't all that long when you think about it. I've been working on TLC for 2-3 years, and that's a trilogy of books that I still need to edit.

This is one of those cases of 'the more you do something the more you respect others who do it.'

And Brent Weeks, Brandon Sanderson, Peter V Brett, Gail Z Martin, Jon Sprunk, David Dalglish, Jeff Wheeler, Chris Hollaway, Mark Lawrence, Robin Hobb, Jim Butcher, Joe Abercrombie, George R.R. Martin and the host of other amazing writers that I've read over the years and haven't mentioned - I respect all you guys immensely.

A-meme-before-memes-were-memes
- James

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the shout-out, James! I appreciate it.

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    Replies
    1. You are most welcome Jeff. Keep up the good work :)

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