Thursday 26 July 2018

Writing The Nor'easter


Welcome back!


Hello everyone - it's been a while since my last update, but thought it was worth breaking radio silence to let you know how things are going with the follow-up to The Pink Herring.


What took you so long?


Well, it's a long story... When I write, I keep a daily log of progress (click on the graph for a larger view) which produces these timeline charts - date along the bottom and words written on the side. You can see, just from the shape of the graph that it's been a hard mountain to climb, but just to let you know, the first draft of The Nor'easter is now finished.

How did it all begin?


If you start at the blue blob marked as #1,  I started writing The Nor'easter on the 17th of October 2016. This was straight after I finished the first draft of The Pink Herring, bashing out about 10,000 words. Then I received the editorial review of The Pink Herring - this is blue blob #2 - and work on the sequel stopped completely.

Why did you stop?


I spent the next five months re-writing The Pink Herring (for those who don't know, the ending changed completely) finally published on 27th March 2017. I wrote a little more of the Nor'easter taking us to blob #3 and 20,000 words but then realised that I needed to significantly up my marketing game, which takes us to blob #4.

Looks like you got stuck in again?


Sales of the Pink Herring were doing nicely, which released me from marketing and back to writing. In just over a month I managed to reach 50,000 words, the story developing nicely when I hit the 90-day hiatus on Amazon. This is the traditional time period where book sales dramatically drop off, calling for a re-think on the marketing front - welcome to blob #5.

This looks like a very rocky section?


From mid-July 2017 through to December, I tried to juggle marketing with writing. Initially, I focused on marketing work in the morning and writing in the afternoon, but I found it very distracting and non-productive - from a writing point of view. So, you can see that I ended up doing little stints of each, giving this ragged ascent of words, reaching 90,000 by Christmas and blob #6.

What happened after Christmas?


This is what is commonly known as "The difficult second album" period. From blob #6 to #7, a period of nearly two and a half months, I managed to write just 10,000 words. This is where the desire to write a far superior book than the first, puts on so much pressure that the creative juices begin to dry up. I tried different techniques to restructure the book, editing as I went to try to deliver this better book, completely forgetting that I hadn't even finished the first draft - breaking the cardinal rule - don't mess with the book until it's finished. It was now a year after I'd published The Pink Herring and the added deadline pressure brought everything to a grinding halt.

How did you get out of the pit?


You can see that the graph flatlines between blobs #7 and #8 - a period of three months. What I did was to take some advice - do something completely different for a while. So I took some holiday time to clear my head during which I came up with the story for the next book - The Eroded Soul - which I started writing on the side. The advice was excellent. After a short break from The Nor'easter, I returned to it refreshed, completing the first draft in under a month - a 40,000-word sprint.

So, where are you now?


You will see a short, flat line to blob #9 - this was the final read-through of the first draft - which brings us up to date. Small plotline inconsistencies, spelling and grammar have all been fixed and now it's over to my content editor for the final read-through. It's my second time through this loop, so I'm hoping to publish sometime in September 2018 - a full year over my original estimate.

What's next?


I'm heading back to the third book in the series, The Whistle Blower, which I'm overconfidently trying to get published for Christmas - yes Christmas 2018, you cheeky people! I'll also be working on the marketing for The Nor'easter which will be released in hardback and ebook through Amazon and as an ebook through B&N, Apple Books, Kobo, Kindle, Nook, 24S and Scribd. 

Thanks for reading and I'll keep you posted with more updates as I get them - leave me a message in the comments section below if you'd like to find out more...


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