Those of you who read this blog on any regular basis (both of you) may remember that I’ve written several science fiction novels, and that I’ve been trying for a number of years to find an agent for the first (and ultimately, all three). As an update to that, I’ve almost completely given up finding an agent or publisher, and have decided to publish the trilogy myself. I’m looking at two self-publishing routes, KDP publishing and Ingram Spark. I like Ingram Spark because of the potential of getting my paper-based books in bookstores. (We’ll see.) KDP will get it on virtually all e-readers, and that covers the two basic routes of publishing.
In preparation for putting the finished product out there, I sent the manuscript to a professional editor and have gotten her critiques back. I’m now in the process of making some revisions which should be complete within the next few weeks. Then I have to go through the manuscript word by word, paragraph by paragraph, page by page, scene by scene, chapter by chapter, until I’m satisfied that it meets my own stringent qualifications. That will take time (but it’s time well spent).
One side effect of re-reading and re-editing one’s own literary works is that of discovering things you didn’t know were there. In one case, the editor made a suggestion about the ending which I proceeded to fix by adding a short but highly emotionally intense scene to help add danger and peril that the characters have to overcome before the conclusion. But that scene had one unintended consequence: it forced me to eliminate a scene I liked and wished I could keep.
Like “show, don’t tell,” and “write what you know,” a new writer is frequently admonished to “kill your darlings.” This advice is intended to tell the new writer not to put too much emphasis on hifalutin flowery prose that exists simply because it sounds good, or looks good on the page, or just because they like it. [The phrase has been attributed to William Faulkner and Stephen King among many others, but may have originated with Arthur Quiller-Couch in his “On The Art Of Writing” from 1914.] Each word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, scene, must contribute to the story in such a way as to keep it moving and not confuse the reader. You don’t want a reader asking, “Why the hell is this in here?” Or, “It’s nice, but I don’t understand what this contributes to the story.” I came up against this in my revisions, and had to eliminate that one scene. When I originally wrote that scene—and even up to today—I thought I’d done a good job with it, and I have always liked it. But—and I don’t say this lightly—it had to go. I cut it from the manuscript and put it in a separate file where I look at it from time to time to remind myself of its literary beauty. I wish I could find a place for it. But that is not to be. It remains out.