This August, it will be five years since I decided to start writing on a professional level. \u00a0A lot of things have changed since then, and in some ways they’re changing even faster now.<\/p>\n
For example, in May 2009 I started a spreadsheet to keep track of my daily word counts. \u00a0I’ve been keeping it diligently ever since then, with graphs and everything. \u00a0But just recently, I’ve decided to stop doing that. \u00a0Word count is a very shallow indicator of progress: it only measures quantity, and often leads to unnecessary angst or diverts attention from more important things.<\/p>\n
Instead, I’m going to focus more on deadlines and work to develop some other, better indicators. \u00a0Number of books published per year is probably a key one, as well as number of manuscripts finished. \u00a0But deadlines are probably going to be the most important drivers from here on out: publishing deadlines as well as writing deadlines.<\/p>\n
Another thing that’s shifting is my revision process. \u00a0I know that a lot of beginning writers hate Heinlein’s rules, but almost all the long-term professionals swear by them–especially the ones with careers that I would like to emulate. \u00a0This makes me think that I need to scale back on the revisions and develop more trust in my creative voice.<\/p>\n
Just as a point of reference, Heinlein’s rules are:<\/p>\n
I’m currently on the second draft of\u00a0Stars of Blood and Glory<\/strong>, and what I’ve found so far is that the overall story is actually pretty good. \u00a0Some of the scenes are a little out of order, and some of the plot-lines are missing elements that need to be added in, but aside from a few chapters where I got lost for a couple of pages, not a lot needs to be changed.<\/p>\n Of course, I\u00a0could<\/em>\u00a0spend a draft or two tweaking every other sentence, tossing out most of what I wrote in the heat of my creative passion–but would that really make the story any better? \u00a0I recently had Kindal’s writing group critique my first chapter–the one that I revised pretty heavily in April–and they found all sorts of problems that weren’t in the original draft, as I wrote it back in December.<\/p>\n Don’t get me wrong–I do think there is an important place for revision. \u00a0But I think it’s best epitomized by Tracy Hickman in this episode<\/a> of Writing Excuses:<\/p>\n We write from the heat of our passion, but we edit to see the fire through the smoke.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And even Tracy only does three drafts.<\/p>\n The other thing that’s changing is how I look at alpha reading. \u00a0I used to have different tiers of alpha and beta readers–most of whom were writers in other genres, and not really fans of \u00a0science fiction. \u00a0I asked them to give me as much feedback as they could, and bugged them for weeks or months at a time asking if they’d read my story. \u00a0I then compiled all their line-by-line comments into one giant master-file, which I kept open on the left side of my screen as I made the changes to my manuscript on the right.<\/p>\n Well, I’ve started to realize that there’s a\u00a0<\/em>huge<\/em>\u00a0difference between reading for criticism and reading for enjoyment. \u00a0Because of that, a lot of the things my alpha and beta readers pointed out were things that most regular readers probably wouldn’t have noticed. \u00a0Towards the end, I started to get wise on this, and only followed about a third of the criticism that I received.<\/p>\n Don’t get me wrong–I do appreciate the feedback. \u00a0A lot of it helped me to see and fix problems that I’d otherwise missed. \u00a0But a lot of it came out in casual conversations with my readers after they’d finished the story–not in the line-by-line comments on the original draft.<\/p>\n For those reasons, I think I’m going to change the way I ask for feedback. \u00a0Instead of alpha and beta readers, I’m going to go with a handful of “test readers”–readers who enjoy the kind of science fiction I like to write, but who may or may not be writers themselves. \u00a0Instead of asking for a detailed, line-by-line critique, I’m going to ask them three things:<\/p>\n I’ll ask them to give it three chances, and if they still can’t finish, that’s okay–just let me know where the hangups were. \u00a0And if they do finish it, I might have some questions for them–but then again, I might not. \u00a0It all depends on the story.<\/p>\n Compared to where I was when I started out–or even where I was three months ago–those are some pretty huge paradigm shifts. \u00a0I have no idea how it’s going to turn out. \u00a0I’ve grown a lot as a writer recently, and I hope that this is moving me in the right direction, but I won’t really know until I’ve tried it out for a while.<\/p>\n In any case, this post is long enough. \u00a0I’d better get back to writing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This August, it will be five years since I decided to start writing on a professional level. \u00a0A lot of things have changed since then, and in some ways they’re changing even faster now. For example, in May 2009 I started a spreadsheet to keep track of my daily word counts. \u00a0I’ve been keeping it… Continue reading No more word counts and other paradigm shifts<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[569],"tags":[89,158,733,529,330,448,156,537,85],"class_list":["post-7511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sbg","tag-career-decisions","tag-first-readers","tag-heinleins-rules","tag-indie-publishing","tag-paradigm-shifts","tag-personal-growth","tag-revising","tag-robert-a-heinlein","tag-tracy-hickman","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-1X9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7511"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7512,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7511\/revisions\/7512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n