It’s been long enough ago that many of you might not recall that I used to post stories as soon as I finished a chapter. I quit doing that back in 2016 when I finished Living Next Door to Heaven 2. Then I started holding books until they were completely finished and fully edited (and/or rewritten) before I started posting them.
There were a few motivating factors. First, I was becoming alarmed at the number of stories I started reading online only to get to the last chapter and discover the story was “Unfinished and Inactive.” At that point, I decided that I would only post stories that are finished and edited so I could upload all the chapters to post automagically on the scheduled dates. I didn’t want anyone to get to the end of one of my posted stories and say, “He didn’t finish it?” Even if someone came along later and said, “Oh yeah. He died.”
Believe me, I have a lot of those stories in my files. Among the most recent ones are stories I started called “It Ain’t Immortality, But…”, “From Birth”, “A Place Among Peers”, and “Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain 2.” In each case the story was interrupted when I found it didn’t hold together past the concept, or that I lost interest in it, or another great idea just came along and claimed my head (like Team Manager SWISH! and Bob's Memoir). I can hear the screams from irate readers if I just quit posting those stories and they faded into a yellow bar across the title.
Another reason is that I change a story significantly after the first draft and people get irrationally upset when the names of favorite characters change, the birthday changes, the story location changes, etc.
Case in point: I wrote and posted Living Next Door to Heaven between 2014 and 2016. THEN, I decided to publish the story. Only I’d used names and even a few events that were too similar to actual people I’d known. Even though the chances that those people would be the kind of people who would read one of my books were slim, I did a sweeping change of names, schools, towns, and other locations. However, I didn’t post those changes on SOL because LNDtH was my most popular story and people were heavily invested in the characters the way they were named.
Spin forward two or three years when I wrote LNDtH 3: What Were They Thinking? I had left behind the original character names and places years before. I wrote with all the new names. I am still getting comments from people who read the last story and get upset because the names have changed.
Another example happened this week. I’m writing a fun new story that I can hardly wait to share with you, called Full Frame. I post the raw, unedited version online for my Sausage Grinder Patrons who pay to see it before anyone touches it. But over the past week and a half, I re-read and edited from the beginning because a reader had suggested that I didn’t set up certain relationships and actions well enough early on. And I agreed.
So, I rewrote several chapters and realized I didn’t like the name of the town; the name of one character who became more important than I thought he would was too similar to the name of another person I had introduced; a sister’s name wasn’t appropriate for the family; and I’d consistently misspelled or switched between spellings of a couple of others. I corrected all that in the new draft and when I continued writing, I used all the new information.
Now I have to explain to the Sausage Grinders that I know Eby Mill has been changed to Abbey Mills (not entirely because of autocorrect); I know the sister is now Naomi, not Susan; yes, it is Father Emory and not Father Emroy; and the tension between the town constable and the motorcyclists was established in chapter two.
But they paid to see that, so they understand. Readers on SOL wouldn’t.
I leave published works far behind me when they are finished. I seldom even go back to correct a typo. “What is written is written; it cannot be erased,” said. Pilate.
On the other hand, my blog posts go up with no more than a re-read, untouched by editors’ eyes. You get this raw.
Enjoy!