I've been busy with other parts of my life recently and I was a bit reluctant to write the next part of the sequel to Infused, so I didn't make a great deal of progress for a while. The reluctance on my part was mostly caused by my having not thought much about the details of what needed to be said in the sixth chapter; it was my own form of writer's block.
However, after writing parts of the seventh chapter, I was able to come back to chapter six finally and finish it up. I then went through and brought together the pieces of chapter seven that I had written. After finishing those two chapters, I went on to write one more chapter which I just finished up today.
So, currently I at eight chapters and about 21,500 words. I feel very good about the story so far and I have heard positive feedback from the couple of people that have read parts of it so far. Hopefully I will be able to continue to let the words flow.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Editing Part of the Sequel to Infused
Over the past week I have spent time editing the first five chapters of the sequel to Infused. Mainly I was looking at sentence structure and the flow of the wording.
When I write I will sometimes drop out a word or two while I am typing in the rush to get the sentence written, so this was the most basic thing that I was looking to clean up (as well as other typos).
I also read each sentence individually to ensure that they are not confusing and that what I am trying to say comes across. This is the main cause of additional verbiage being added during editing. In total I added about four hundred words across these five chapters while editing them.
One other thing that I pay close attention to while editing is the repetitive use of words across multiple sentences. For instance, in one section I found that I used the words "used to" three times in two adjoining sentences, so I found alternatives for two of them.
A friend of mine that edits for a living helped perform a final edit of Infused for me. Seeing the changes that she suggested has helped me to write from the beginning on this novel using some of those guidelines, so editing will be less of an effort. However, for some of the standards that she used I will wait until the book is completed and ready for final formatting. An example of this is adding spaces to ellipsis, so "..." will become " . . .". Those types of changes will be easier to do en masse, (since the process will only have to be done once instead of multiple times).
When I write I will sometimes drop out a word or two while I am typing in the rush to get the sentence written, so this was the most basic thing that I was looking to clean up (as well as other typos).
I also read each sentence individually to ensure that they are not confusing and that what I am trying to say comes across. This is the main cause of additional verbiage being added during editing. In total I added about four hundred words across these five chapters while editing them.
One other thing that I pay close attention to while editing is the repetitive use of words across multiple sentences. For instance, in one section I found that I used the words "used to" three times in two adjoining sentences, so I found alternatives for two of them.
A friend of mine that edits for a living helped perform a final edit of Infused for me. Seeing the changes that she suggested has helped me to write from the beginning on this novel using some of those guidelines, so editing will be less of an effort. However, for some of the standards that she used I will wait until the book is completed and ready for final formatting. An example of this is adding spaces to ellipsis, so "..." will become " . . .". Those types of changes will be easier to do en masse, (since the process will only have to be done once instead of multiple times).
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Making Progress
It's been a hectic few weeks. I've had to work late a good bit at my daytime job on a project and I was tied up with designing the lighting for a local community play in the evenings for a week. I usually end up designing lights for three or four plays a year. I have also worked on set construction a number of times and I have even helped sew costumes.
Even with all of these "distractions" I have managed to get some writing completed for the sequel to Infused. I am now up to over 13,000 words. I still have a long way to go; so far I've really only (mostly) completed the introduction to the setting. Soon I'll get into the actual story and we'll see where it goes from there.
A little over a week ago I added some information about myself and Infused to GoodReads.com. I had not realized that the book had been listed there since May of last year (with barely more than the name presented), but now the cover can be seen and there is also a brief insight into the story that I wrote. Also included is an automatic link to this blog.
Even with all of these "distractions" I have managed to get some writing completed for the sequel to Infused. I am now up to over 13,000 words. I still have a long way to go; so far I've really only (mostly) completed the introduction to the setting. Soon I'll get into the actual story and we'll see where it goes from there.
A little over a week ago I added some information about myself and Infused to GoodReads.com. I had not realized that the book had been listed there since May of last year (with barely more than the name presented), but now the cover can be seen and there is also a brief insight into the story that I wrote. Also included is an automatic link to this blog.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Writing and Character Names
I am making headway on the sequel to Infused, I've written about 7,500 words now.
One of the things that authors have to deal with when writing any story is the character names.
When writing Infused, I only had a few of the names selected before I started writing, the rest I just came up with as they were needed. In the fantasy novel that I was writing last year (and is currently on hold), I researched medieval English names and created a list of names to use before I started writing. I also spent time coming up with appropriate town names in for that story.
In this story I had to make a different kind of decision about the names as I started writing. Although Geoff understands any language, the story itself is actually written in English, so, the question was what to do about proper names for people on another planet. I could have decided to "translate" the names to something that Geoff would have been used to, but it would have felt odd to introduce an alien named Betty or something similar. I instead decided to have the names (for the most part) be completely made up but without making them difficult to say.
I know that if I am reading a book and a character is given a unique, hard to pronounce name, I tend to make up a short substitute for it and automatically swap the name out as I read. This has caused some confusion when talking with someone else about a book because they would refer to one of the characters that has a twelve character long name by that name, and I would not have a clue who they were referring to (because I thought of that character as Matt).
So, you can expect my aliens' names to be short and pronounceable.
One of the things that authors have to deal with when writing any story is the character names.
When writing Infused, I only had a few of the names selected before I started writing, the rest I just came up with as they were needed. In the fantasy novel that I was writing last year (and is currently on hold), I researched medieval English names and created a list of names to use before I started writing. I also spent time coming up with appropriate town names in for that story.
In this story I had to make a different kind of decision about the names as I started writing. Although Geoff understands any language, the story itself is actually written in English, so, the question was what to do about proper names for people on another planet. I could have decided to "translate" the names to something that Geoff would have been used to, but it would have felt odd to introduce an alien named Betty or something similar. I instead decided to have the names (for the most part) be completely made up but without making them difficult to say.
I know that if I am reading a book and a character is given a unique, hard to pronounce name, I tend to make up a short substitute for it and automatically swap the name out as I read. This has caused some confusion when talking with someone else about a book because they would refer to one of the characters that has a twelve character long name by that name, and I would not have a clue who they were referring to (because I thought of that character as Matt).
So, you can expect my aliens' names to be short and pronounceable.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Writing Again
After I made the tweaks to the printed version of Infused recently I think that I finally felt that I was finished with that book. It's been quite a while since I have written anything, but in the last week I started working on the sequel to Infused. I've written a little over 3,000 words so far, and I feel that it is going pretty well. I have the basic story mapped out (which is quite a bit more than I had for the first book when I started writing it since I really only knew the beginning and the end). For comparison, Infused is about 90,000 words long.
Hopefully I will be able to maintain writing at a good pace. My plan is that if I get stuck or just feel that I need to think a section through more before continuing that I will switch to writing on a fantasy novel that I started before Infused was published. After all, I do have over 16,000 words already written on that one.
I don't tend to follow the method of "just getting it on paper". With that method, writers tend to just get the story written down without really paying close attention to grammar or sentence structure or paying attention to details in general. To me, that seems like writing a very detailed outline because you really have to go back and re-write the entire thing again at least once (and probably multiple times). I tend to try and get very close to the final product on the first pass. I will go back and fix grammar some (and punctuation quite a bit) and tweak sentences a bit (usually replacing words that have been used too often), but I don't go back and restructure or re-write sections. This of course means that I am not the fastest writer out there, but it also means that there should be less effort in the editing process later on.
Now that I have gone through the process to publish Infused in paperback and have made it available in the three major ebook markets, hopefully the post writing process in general will be much shorter the next time. That is if I can figure out what the cover art should be and I can figure out how to make that happen of course.
Hopefully I will be able to maintain writing at a good pace. My plan is that if I get stuck or just feel that I need to think a section through more before continuing that I will switch to writing on a fantasy novel that I started before Infused was published. After all, I do have over 16,000 words already written on that one.
I don't tend to follow the method of "just getting it on paper". With that method, writers tend to just get the story written down without really paying close attention to grammar or sentence structure or paying attention to details in general. To me, that seems like writing a very detailed outline because you really have to go back and re-write the entire thing again at least once (and probably multiple times). I tend to try and get very close to the final product on the first pass. I will go back and fix grammar some (and punctuation quite a bit) and tweak sentences a bit (usually replacing words that have been used too often), but I don't go back and restructure or re-write sections. This of course means that I am not the fastest writer out there, but it also means that there should be less effort in the editing process later on.
Now that I have gone through the process to publish Infused in paperback and have made it available in the three major ebook markets, hopefully the post writing process in general will be much shorter the next time. That is if I can figure out what the cover art should be and I can figure out how to make that happen of course.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Print Version of Infused Updated
Since it was originally published, I have found (or been told about) a few typos and grammar errors in Infused. Recently, when I converted the novel over to iBooks on a Mac, the document editor on that system pointed out a few more issues to consider (although not all of the things that it pointed out were actually incorrect). So, with the accumulation of a number of minor tweaks, I decided that it would be a good time to update the print version of the book.
With CreateSpace, when you update a book, it becomes unavailable for purchase until the process has been completed and approved. So, the print version of Infused has been unavailable for the past few days. Luckily I live one state over from one of their printing shops, so the proof of the book only took a couple of days to get here. I found a minor formatting issue and resubmitted the change online, but it will not require me to have another proof shipped to me since it is in the interior of the book - those type of changes can be proofed very well online. I have approved the new changes and am now waiting for their systems to verify that everything is in order. So, it will hopefully be available for purchase again tomorrow at some point.
During my rush to finally get Infused published last year I found that I had not put any thought into the design of the back cover of the book. What I ended up doing was putting together a quick introduction to the story using a graphics program to produce the text. This meant that there was no spelling or grammar checker, so, right near the beginning of the text there was a typo. I really wanted to fix that with this edition, so since I was modifying the cover anyway, I decided to add a picture of the author to the back cover as well. Although I love the way that the front and spine of the book turned out, the back is still pretty bland - but at least people get to see my (somewhat) smiling face now.
With CreateSpace, when you update a book, it becomes unavailable for purchase until the process has been completed and approved. So, the print version of Infused has been unavailable for the past few days. Luckily I live one state over from one of their printing shops, so the proof of the book only took a couple of days to get here. I found a minor formatting issue and resubmitted the change online, but it will not require me to have another proof shipped to me since it is in the interior of the book - those type of changes can be proofed very well online. I have approved the new changes and am now waiting for their systems to verify that everything is in order. So, it will hopefully be available for purchase again tomorrow at some point.
During my rush to finally get Infused published last year I found that I had not put any thought into the design of the back cover of the book. What I ended up doing was putting together a quick introduction to the story using a graphics program to produce the text. This meant that there was no spelling or grammar checker, so, right near the beginning of the text there was a typo. I really wanted to fix that with this edition, so since I was modifying the cover anyway, I decided to add a picture of the author to the back cover as well. Although I love the way that the front and spine of the book turned out, the back is still pretty bland - but at least people get to see my (somewhat) smiling face now.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Infused Available on iTunes
The iPad version of Infused is now available. I used the iBooks Author tool from Apple to create the iBook version of the novel. It took this long for me create this new version simply because I did not have access to a Mac. Last week I bought a Mac Mini to be able to format books and to play around with writing iOS applications.
The iBooks version of Infused has the added feature of titles for each chapter, a bit fancier page layout, and a few minor edits.
After getting the iBooks Author tool installed, it just took a few hours to import the text from the original Word document and then go through it with the built in proofreader and spell checker to look for things that should be touched up. Once I was ready to publish the book I found that I needed to register with iTunes. It took a few days for my account to be setup. Then after installing an additional piece of software (and having to guess how to fill out several pages of forms) I uploaded my book to Apple. Next came the review process by Apple. I checked several times the next day to see if it was available in iTunes, and it appeared about a day after I had uploaded it.
The iPad version of Infused can be found at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/infused/id593767688?ls=1
The iBooks version of Infused has the added feature of titles for each chapter, a bit fancier page layout, and a few minor edits.
After getting the iBooks Author tool installed, it just took a few hours to import the text from the original Word document and then go through it with the built in proofreader and spell checker to look for things that should be touched up. Once I was ready to publish the book I found that I needed to register with iTunes. It took a few days for my account to be setup. Then after installing an additional piece of software (and having to guess how to fill out several pages of forms) I uploaded my book to Apple. Next came the review process by Apple. I checked several times the next day to see if it was available in iTunes, and it appeared about a day after I had uploaded it.
The iPad version of Infused can be found at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/infused/id593767688?ls=1
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