Welcome to the six installment of Year One – you can access the previous entries right here!

In the last installment I veered off course a little to address the all-important email list, but let’s get back to the process of creation.

The first draft is done. It feels awesome, like a giant weight has been lifted. Pat yourself on the back and feel great for a minute, but the real work is about to begin.

Everyone likes different things about writing, I actually enjoy rewriting.

It’s fun to tear a piece apart for what works and doesn’t work. Moving this piece here, slashing that one, or adding another. This is the time to turn that piece of coal into a diamond (in a lot shorter amount of time hopefully!).

Rewriting is a process that can be daunting and depending on if you are a plotter or a pantser, the amount of rewriting may vary greatly.

When I take on a rewrite, I usually give it a week from the time I type “The End” until I even pick the piece back up. I need distance to gain perspective. Then I read it straight through and try my hardest not to make notes (I always fail here). After I’ve read it and gotten a fresh look, I dig in and start ripping my work apart.

This is a lather, rinse, repeat action – as many times as necessary. And believe me, it could go on forever. The key is knowing when to say enough is enough, you begin to see diminishing returns and are just tinkering with descriptions and sentence structure.

I think part of this comes down to that little bit of fear of typing “The End” and meaning it. I could literally find reasons to never consider a work done. If you’re looking for perfect, there is no such thing. If you think it’s perfect, you’re deluding yourself.

Rewrite until it works. Find your plot holes and fill them. Tie up all the loose ends. Make sure it all fits. Then…

Take the next step.

The most important piece of advice I can give anyone who is self-publishing is simple and should seem obvious:

Hire an editor. You may think you can, but you cannot edit your own work. It’s too familiar, you know what it should say, so you gloss over mistakes. You miss things that anyone reading it for the first time will see right away and if you have a bunch of typos in the first chapter, it’s likely a reader will not give you the benefit of the doubt – they will simply put your book down and move on.

If you are lucky enough to know someone who is a qualified editor (like an English teacher or something of that ilk) that’s great. Odds are you don’t, invest in yourself, invest in an editor.

There are several levels of editor, but basically, your choice involves content or proofreading (each has multiple levels of depth as well).

If you are confident in your plot and themes, go for the proofreading option. If you feel like something is missing and you need an unbiased opinion, get a deeper development edit.

It is so worth it. I only did a proofread edit for Shady Place because I had already been through years of story development before ever turning the concept into a novel and knew the plotting was solid.

You may find another rewrite is necessary after an editor gets their hands on your work. Their comments are not an attack, I promise. They actually want to help you make your work better. You don’t have to make the changes they recommend, but at least consider them.

So, to absolutely beat a dead horse.

Write, rewrite, HIRE AN EDITOR!*

*Repeat as necessary.

The Couch #1 received a pretty nice review last week on ComicBastards.com by Hunter Patrick:

Go get this book if you can find it and help support the creators for a book that deserves to be on shelves everywhere and not just a couch somewhere…

Check it out the rest here:

Welcome to the fifth installment of Year One – you can access the previous entries right here!

Last time we talked about the act of writing.  Today I’m going to take a step back…

It’s time to write.  And write you must or you won’t have anything to sell.  You already know what you’re going to write and how you’re going to write it.

Now it’s time to sit down and pump out that first draft, re-write, publish it, and the whole world will jump all over it when it’s ready.

This is where I would insert the record scratch if I could.

At this point you should definitely be writing and writing every day, but stop and take a second to think about one thing:

Your work is not Field of Dreams!  Once you’ve built it, they will not come.  Because they don’t know about it!

If you are writing just to do it and not worried about people buying or ever really reading your work, then you can disregard this.

My biggest regret when I released Shady Place was that I started marketing it six months to a year too late.  When you settle on and decide what you are going to write you need to start letting the world know and that’s where The List comes in.

Your biggest and best supporters are going to be the people you know.  This is what helped make Shady Place a success in the early going in my opinion.  I knew enough people who, as they say, know, like, and trust me to give my book a shot and I’m grateful every day for every one of them.

I could have made Shady Place a much bigger success if I had begun cultivating an email list a year ahead of the book’s launch instead of the week after it was already out.

That’s what I do now, if you’re reading this you likely are on my email list and get updates about what I’m up to, hopefully you feel like you are getting an opportunity to know me and what I’m all about.

Email is the best way to communicate with people, way better than all the noise we are bombarded with on social media.

I’ve got my list now, I touch people as frequently as I can without being a bother, and I hope I provide some value to those who receive my updates.

If you’re thinking about being a creator of any sort don’t wait, start building that list now, tell people what you’re up to.  It will help give you the leg up that I wish I had figured out before I got so far in!  Not sure how to do it or where to start?  Email me and I’ll talk you through it.

BONUS/DISCLAIMER: Take your choice. If you start sharing with the world that you are going to be bringing something awesome into the world, you damn well better do it.

Use this as motivation or terrify you, either works:)