Reluctant_Sir: Blog

Writers are, by and large, odd people with inflated, but ultimately fragile, egos. We write for many reasons; to exorcise our demons or to express our angst, or maybe just to give an outward voice to our inner monologue. We do it to entertain and to inform; to beguile and berate. Why, we even do it to titillate!

We ply our trade at odd hours of the day, often toiling over a sentence or a phrase for hours and then whipping out a dozen pages in a frenzy of creativity and without a second thought.

We dash off a sentence that resonates with the readers soul and then plop down some tripe that makes you wonder why the author bothered to get out of bed. We can be brilliant and bombastic and as base as the meanest, would-be drunken poet, on the street corner.

What we are not, is perfect.

So, what is an imperfect pen to do with problem prose? Get an editor! Or a proofreader! Or both. For some of us, several of both.

I don't know how other writers feel, I don't know many personally and those that I do know spend more time talking about writing than actually writing. I only know for sure that my relationship with the foolhardy, er, I mean, the brave souls who edit my stories is a schizophrenic one.

I love them and hate them and respect them and despise them, all at the same time. I also couldn't do this without their help, make no mistake. They make all the difference in the world.

Each one takes the raw draft and gives it their own individual takes on what they see as problem areas, word choice errors, logical or chronological errors and even continuity issues. Oh! And let's not forget spelling. Oh no, that wouldn't do at all. Why, forgetting to mention spelling would let the reader assume I never have issues with how I spel.

Ahem. Anyway.

When I review their work, each and every red mark on each and every page is a paper cut. By the time I am done with all three versions, if I have not bled out, I consider the end result as a success, even if it never gets posted.

A painful, messy, often almost impossible to bear, success.

Sometimes, when I have been unconscionably sloppy, and the red marks outnumber the black, I hear that little call in the back of my head saying, "You aren't good enough, this is proof." It is my stubbornness, the voices in my head that are clamoring to escape, and the reactions I get from readers that keep me going; that keep me working on the next failure.

Then I post the work. The reaction of the readers... ah, let me tell you something. It is a drug. Don't let anyone tell you different. You might take a good hit and float all day, or a bad hit and wonder how bad it would be to write porn scripts for a living, but it is a drug.

Readers are where the rubber hits the pudding, where the proof is on the road; where metaphors get mangled and similes smashed to smithereens.

Reader reaction to a story is, for me, the reason I bother to share my stories. I would write, regardless, but I wouldn't bother getting them edited or sharing if I didn't want to see the reactions I get from readers.

And I am not going to lie now, not after all of this. Good responses are what drive me forward. Well-thought-out critical responses are, at least, appreciated. Bad responses, well, I just try to get past them and not take them personally.

As for those writers who tell you they are indifferent to the critical acclaim, or the jeers... I don't buy it. Whatever, they play the game their way, I play it mine.

Anyway, after an email exchange with a very helpful editor about this topic, I thought I would share my thoughts.

While the writer gets the cheers and jeers for the story itself, share some praise for the editors and their help in making it readable.

In the most recent chapter of 'Magic 101', there is a section that was stricken and was supposed to be removed.

Yeah, well, that didn't happen.

So, when you get there, feel free to just, you know, skip it. Pretend it is not there.

<strike>I'll get it fixed, promise.</strike> (<-- This worked in Preview, but not when posted... weird.)

Update # 1: Okay, I am attempting a thing. I have staged a repost of the current chapter and I hope this doesn't have an adverse effect on the rest of the chapters held in abeyance by the automated process.

Updated #2: It worked! The chapter reposted. So, if the next chapter posts as scheduled, at least I will know that I can edit already posted chapters without waiting for the rest of the story to post first. That is nice to know for future gaffes.

Cross your fingers.

I thought I had written about this, but the evidently I haven't, based on the number of emails I have gotten so far.

Just before I posted Magic 101, I noticed I had been inconsistent with whether or not I capitalized the word Mage. Since this was a story about magic, I thought it appropriate for it to be always capitalized.

Can you guess what I did wrong? Yes! Exactly! That is why I like you folks, you are smarter than the average picnic basket, or Park Ranger, or bear or... something.

I did a global find and replace for 'mage' and substituted 'Mage'.

Et voilà! A quick and easy fix!

Yeah... um, except for words like daMage and iMage and, well, you get the picture.

Proper

Planning

Prevents

Piss

Poor

Performance

** No, I didn't forget Prior, it is redundant and people who use it as the seventh P smell of bacon. Bacon is for sycophants, products of incest and people who steal gags from video games.

Now, in the past, when I had scheduled multiple chapters to be posted, I would have to take the time to load each individual chapter separately and, since I did it that way, I could then replace or update each individual chapter before it actually posted.

With this new setup, which I absolutely love so far, there is a slight drawback in that I don't have the ability to pick and choose, interceding with a specific chapter mid-process.

This means I cannot fix this globally bad idea until the whole story is loaded. It also means that I get a LOT of emails about certain issues because people think I either don't know yet or am ignoring the issue.

Small price to pay, but there you go. I don't want to discourage folks from writing in, or from offering corrections and suggestions as needed, but on this one, can we say I have been suitably chastised?

Humbly yours,

--Reluctant_Sir

I have been getting a lot of great feedback on this story so far, something I enjoy a lot. Folks asking questions, offering advice and so on.

There have been many people saying they hoped this story carried on and got finished, so I think I might not have been as clear as I could have been in the past.

This story is complete and queued up.

The entire story, from start to finish, already in the hopper and being posted at the rate of one chapter every three days. This will continue until the 29th, where you will get 2 (TWO!) chapters to end the book on Leap Year.

I will not publish a story that is not complete. No partials, no on-going serials. Every story I publish will have an ending. You may not like it, you may want a continuation, a sequel, a series, but each story can stand on its own (I hope in quality, as well as in structure)

So, no worries, okay?

Dark Days 2 is with the editors! It is. Really. Truely. It is done and being fixed to make it readable. It will be posted unless I die first. Probably not until sometime in March. Maybe April. Depends on how bad it is and how long it takes the editors to translate my meanderings.

I have a couple other stories in the hopper as well, one complete except for editing, one well on the way, so I will continue pushing out work as long as my muse sticks around!

Thanks, everyone, for your support. I literally would not, could not, do this without the support of the readers.

Our wondrous overlord has set up some new codes for those of us who like to post stories over time. They allow us to dictate the exact date or relative date (Today + 3 for example) for each chapter.

[Edit] IT WORKED!! I will never doubt our overlord again. I am stoked about this because, whether you know it or not, it is was a pain in the butt to schedule posting ahead of time until now. This is AWESOME!

I planned this so the chapters drop every three days, with 13 chapters in total and end on February 29th with a Double Chapter posting (AM and PM) in celebration of leap year.

Anyway, happy reading and I hope you find this as entertaining as I did writing it for you.