Storytime, fascinatingly.
Back in 2006, I started trying to write a ghost story. It was weird, went nowhere, and in general I would rather poke myself in the eye than let people read whatever that thing was.
Then, in 2009, I made the decision to try the story again for NaNoWriMo. It took a more specific shape, and I was able to sustain the story longer than the first attempt, but it was definitely still missing something. I didn't finish that NaNo either, but the story stuck with me, and I started working on revising it. I revised it one way, and then another, and then I realized that a story I'd written for a previous NaNo kind of fit into what I was doing, and suddenly the idea for a series of books popped into existence.
I decided to hand write a new draft from scratch, and over the next few years I finished that, typed up a second draft, printed it, marked it up, fixed the marked problems on the computer, and then I used a coupon from CreateSpace (which I got for completing NaNo in 2012 with a different story) that allowed me to print five free books, one of which you can see in my picture with my surprisingly apropos nails. I received the books before Christmas of 2012, and it was really, really surreal to get a box of books (even if only five) with my name on them and my story inside.
Tina, Petra, and my mother were the first three to read the book, and I was surprised and very pleased to discover that they liked it. It was good, it made me feel better, and so I took another step and gave the story to my friend Michele. Michele, who is a superhuman professional editor, actually went through and completely edited my story for me! It was amazing, and also kind of daunting (seriously - I had so many stupid typos though now I know how to use em dashes), and between her edits and the suggestions for revision that Tina made for me in her copy of the book (which I stole), I proceeded to spend far, far too long actually finishing my revisions. Some of it was a sense of "Oh God, this story is still happening?", but also because I was kind of alarmed by the prospect that if I actually went through with this and finished it, I may have to show it to other people. What if they don't like it? What if they think it's dumb? What if what if etc etc.
But then, in 2014, two friends - Anna and Cindy - both asked if they could read my book too, having listened to me complain about how I kept putting off revisions, and offered to let me know if they thought it was terrible. Thankfully, they did not think it was terrible, and the reassurance of new readers coming two years after I initially had first offered the story up for reading was apparently what I needed to get excited about it again. I sat down, went through all of the awesome edits and revision suggestions, and finally finished the last edits at the very end of May.
And then I sat on it, doing nothing.
However, thanks to pressure from my mother, who had already decided that I should self publish the book about two years before I ever actually agreed with her, I'm finally going to put the book up on CreateSpace and Amazon.
I'm nervous about it, of course. Not only am I potentially sharing something that I've worked on for what feels like forever with people I know and may not know, but I'm also using my actual name, something I do not generally do. However, I don't really like the idea of a pseudonym, and my name is pretty common anyway, so what the hell.
My big idea is that I'm going to put it up on my birthday. That seems like an interesting time to do it, and since my story is a horror story, September 22 is the end of summer and leads straight into the beautiful season of Halloween. Seems fitting!
However, I like the idea of people being able to read a little bit of my stuff before they decide whether or not they actually want to read the full thing, so I've gone ahead and made a Wattpad account and uploaded the prologue and first chapter. The prologue serves to present the horror, because the first chapter otherwise is meant primarily to introduce Andy, the main character. I may throw up the second chapter - we'll see. It's sort of an annoying website as it screws with format and I had to go through and add a bunch of spaces back in, but good enough for now! If you'd like to see it, just go here:
https://www.wattpad.com/myworks/49975637-dominion-jar
We'll see how it goes!
Tina, Petra, and my mother were the first three to read the book, and I was surprised and very pleased to discover that they liked it. It was good, it made me feel better, and so I took another step and gave the story to my friend Michele. Michele, who is a superhuman professional editor, actually went through and completely edited my story for me! It was amazing, and also kind of daunting (seriously - I had so many stupid typos though now I know how to use em dashes), and between her edits and the suggestions for revision that Tina made for me in her copy of the book (which I stole), I proceeded to spend far, far too long actually finishing my revisions. Some of it was a sense of "Oh God, this story is still happening?", but also because I was kind of alarmed by the prospect that if I actually went through with this and finished it, I may have to show it to other people. What if they don't like it? What if they think it's dumb? What if what if etc etc.
But then, in 2014, two friends - Anna and Cindy - both asked if they could read my book too, having listened to me complain about how I kept putting off revisions, and offered to let me know if they thought it was terrible. Thankfully, they did not think it was terrible, and the reassurance of new readers coming two years after I initially had first offered the story up for reading was apparently what I needed to get excited about it again. I sat down, went through all of the awesome edits and revision suggestions, and finally finished the last edits at the very end of May.
And then I sat on it, doing nothing.
However, thanks to pressure from my mother, who had already decided that I should self publish the book about two years before I ever actually agreed with her, I'm finally going to put the book up on CreateSpace and Amazon.
I'm nervous about it, of course. Not only am I potentially sharing something that I've worked on for what feels like forever with people I know and may not know, but I'm also using my actual name, something I do not generally do. However, I don't really like the idea of a pseudonym, and my name is pretty common anyway, so what the hell.
My big idea is that I'm going to put it up on my birthday. That seems like an interesting time to do it, and since my story is a horror story, September 22 is the end of summer and leads straight into the beautiful season of Halloween. Seems fitting!
However, I like the idea of people being able to read a little bit of my stuff before they decide whether or not they actually want to read the full thing, so I've gone ahead and made a Wattpad account and uploaded the prologue and first chapter. The prologue serves to present the horror, because the first chapter otherwise is meant primarily to introduce Andy, the main character. I may throw up the second chapter - we'll see. It's sort of an annoying website as it screws with format and I had to go through and add a bunch of spaces back in, but good enough for now! If you'd like to see it, just go here:
https://www.wattpad.com/myworks/49975637-dominion-jar
We'll see how it goes!
Comments
Post a Comment