I was – oh, geez – still in elementary school, growing
up on Transformers G1 and Transformers: Beast Wars. Mainframe and HASBRO had
just started airing the third season of Beast Wars, and by the second episode –
the introduction of Depth Charge – I finally found my favourite character. The
whole season introduced us to the animosity and history between Depth Charge
and his nemesis, Rampage, and I couldn't sit still between the episodes to wait
for more. Somewhere about this time, I stumbled upon the now-defunct Beast Wars
Anonymous fanfiction website, and by Primus! had I fallen in love with all the
wonderful side adventures the folks at BWA had come up with. It inspired me to
try my own hand, and I posted some things to other websites (BWA was no longer
being updated at this point in time), and began the slow process of evolving as
a writer. Long story short, I was about ten years old when I first started
writing.
I can't say I've ever finished the current incarnation of
my fanfic, although I'm still picking at it here and there, but my original
works are now my priority, so the fanfics will only be updated between those.
I'm proud to say that I do better on finishing my original works, though.
Uncertain Heirs (out for agent queries) and Thoroughbred are entirely
completed, and I have several other first drafts that I'm currently editing. Uncertain Heirs took me about a year and a half to properly write,
edit, revise, repeat, until it was done; on the other hand, Thoroughbred took
around six months. I've got two long short stories/short novellas that I'm in
the process of editing now, one of which I completed just this past July for
Camp NaNoWriMo (The Cardinal's Direction), the other I wrote during NaNoWriMo
2013 (We Can See It Through The Window). I'm hoping those'll only take me an average of a year to finish in their
entireties.
The reason it takes me so long to complete these works is
because I'm doing a 40-hour a week day job, so I only have (if I sit down and
focus) about 3 hours a night to write and edit. The weekends are always up for
grabs, as those days depend on what "real life" demands of me. And
sometimes "real life" doesn't take my writing seriously, which I
think is because I do all my writing on the computer, and most people these
days presume that if you're on a computer (or any mobile device), that you're
just using social media. But see, if I'm not writing, I am still on the
computer, but I'm putting together research, pinning down business plans for
self-publishing, or just trying to get my questions answered. Social media
really only takes up about . . . eh, I'll shoot high, and say I spend about an hour
and a half total on social media each day, but my Twitter usage is limited to
advertising and marketing what I have for sale.
It's somewhat surprising how involved self-publishing can
become. Someone who's just doing the basic Kindle book and limited advertising
won't spend that much time on the business side, but when you really get into
wanting to publish your own works under your own name – and by name, I mean
press name – then you have to start looking into business plans, record
keeping, accounting methods, licensing, short- and long-term goals, marketing,
so on and so on. It can become an involved process, especially if you're
doing it all on your own like I am.
Which reminds me: if you're going to self-publish, and do
it seriously because you want to make money, then you need to develop plans to
get your writing from point Imagination to point Published. A good number of my
stories come from unique dreams that I've had, and many of them have an
open-endedness that I have to fill in to make complete stories. The way I do that
is to write out what I have, then consort with critiquing groups
(Scribophile is my favourite, as it has a straightforward system, and
like-minded folks who're there wanting just as serious of feedback for what
they're giving) to discover the holes I can't see. Based on their feedback, I
fill in, cut, edit, polish, revise, and do everything else it takes to make the
story viable and marketable. If it takes me three rounds of editing, then it
takes me three rounds, same as if it takes me nine. You can't be afraid to work
on something if you want to have a finished product.
And that might just be the most interesting thing about
my writing process, in that I use my patience to get me through the process.
Yes, it does look daunting sometimes, to have just finished one round of edits
to only have to go back and start all over again.
But trust me, it's worth it.
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