Jonathan Renshaw's Blog

First up, let me say that I’m sorry for the long silence. It wasn’t voluntary. I actually tried a few times to write posts, but what I produced was unpublishable.

Since the last blog article, I fell into a gully of worsening symptoms that seemed to have no end. Over the months, I made several visits to doctors but, apart from considering the possibility of long covid on top of the clinical burnout I presumably still had, they couldn’t give me a confident answer. Eventually it became so bad that I had to dig deep into savings and non-existent energy for an overseas flight to recommended medical specialists. Covid was ruled out first with a negative IgG. After a detailed investigation into my case history and weeks of tests, the consensus was that the original diagnosis of burnout was wrong and that I’ve had ME/CFS all along, almost 5 years to date. (I’ll stick to ME for simplicity’s sake.)

If you aren’t familiar with the disease, ME stands for myalgic encephalomyelitis. Good luck getting that one out. It’s also known as CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome), and more recently, SEID (systemic exertion intolerance disease). The name, chronic fatigue syndrome, is sometimes criticized as misleading when used outside of medical circles, because “fatigue” fails to represent the nature of the debilitation or its extent. Among other things, one experiences cognitive impairment, muscle and joint pain, sleep disfunction, and brutal payback after any exertion. Extreme tiredness (a weird sick exhaustion) is a key symptom, but the word, fatigue, in common parlance, suggests something fairly normal that everyone experiences on a daily basis, something we can just overcome by toughing it out. Except in the mildest of cases, this really isn’t possible with ME, and attempting it is exactly how to make the disease worse and prevent recovery.

The physical debilitation can be extreme, but I find the mental side to be worse. The closest comparison I can make is the thick, slow and woolly perception of reality that happens in the seconds following a concussion, except that it often lasted for months. The simplest challenges that used to be mere bumps in the road became mountains.

Since getting my results, all the details that couldn’t be explained by my original diagnosis have dropped into place. It’s a pity it wasn’t detected earlier. My specialist physician actually had the opportunity to do so four years back but he declined to give any diagnosis. At the most recent consultation, when pressed, he conceded that it was the same condition he had seen before and that everything pointed to ME. The neurologist later gave me to understand that specialists (particularly the older ones who learned about the disease long before it was assigned an official ICD code) are often reluctant to diagnose ME because some doctors have tended to use it as a “dumping ground” for a range of conditions with similar symptoms. (And there are many.) These all need to be excluded by various tests, but it seems that there are cases when the tests are not done and patients are diagnosed with ME when they have something else. The unfortunate result is that some specialists are reluctant to diagnose ME even when all the tests are done and it’s the only illness left on the table. This, it appears, was my experience.

My symptoms were moderate at first, which is why I was able to hang onto a much-reduced work load and social life, but the past 18 months permitted none of that. The experience has been like body-surfing in the ocean when the interval between big waves suddenly shrinks. Where you once had stretches of calm water between the breakers, they now hit one after another, and all you can do is tumble with the whitewater and gasp for air when your head breaks the surface. Since early 2022, I’ve had two short windows of remission. Other than that, it’s been constant whitewater that is only now beginning to settle.

The Gains

My first three years of illness held several cycles of remission and relapse, and it was during the windows of remission that I was able to work a few hours a day, usually for 2-6 weeks before mind and body shut down again. It’s possible that this work may have contributed to relapses (though relapses can happen even when resting), but at the time I thought my problem was burnout and that I was in recovery, hence the slow return to normal activities. Had I known what was really happening, I would have managed it differently. Yet in spite of it all, some of the best sections were written during those times.

My favourite reads reflect life in its sunny hilltops as well as its shadowed valleys, giving an honest and balanced telling of the struggle and the joy of what it means to be alive. I don’t think it’s possible to give a faithful representation of valleys without experiencing some. It’s in the valleys that we have the best opportunity to grow in empathy and respect for those in pain, and writing that touches on pain without respect or empathy is painful in itself. It’s one of many things that teaches me to be grateful for the experience.

But what I’ve gained has not been merely an understanding of struggle. Remember the magic of childhood, that thrill of discovery? I don’t think it’s lost at a particular age; rather, I think we lose it to a way of living, a way of thinking, and it can be recovered. One of the times I see this happening is after an extended illness or injury. Suddenly there is overwhelming joy in a thing as simple as being able to go out for a walk. There’s nothing like deprivation to rekindle an appreciation of life. We see it in little way too. Stars never shine so clear as when the endless clouds finally break, and the streets never look so bright as after a season of soupy fog. For writers, these times in the fog and clouds re-introduce us to the magic in so many things, and when we return to the page it all pours out in fresh new colours.

I don’t want anyone to feel they’ve stumbled into an ambush, so here’s a heads-up that I’m going to mention my faith. It’s a more personal perspective on the core of the whole experience, but I’ll understand if you’d rather skip ahead to the next section.

Over the years, I’ve mostly understated how bad it got, especially on public platforms. The reality was pretty dark at times. There were long stretches of several months when the exhaustion, pain, and dull-mindedness were crippling. Work and socials were was impossible, books were incomprehensible, walking was agony. There was no escape, no outlet for stress. Restlessness became volcanic. It was like being a prisoner in my own body. There was only one lifeline that held, and that was my faith. I could have chosen to be angry with God for allowing something that seemed so unfair, but even though it can feel good in a self-destructive way to rage against God, I’ve seen before how quickly that road leads into a desert. So I took the decision away from my emotions, chose to trust God’s goodness, and grasped the lifeline. Instead of falling into depression, which is typical of this disease, I’ve actually gone the other way and found more peace, hope and joy than I’ve ever known before. After a while I understood why.

It’s easy to see God as the giver and not the gift, a kind of divine Santa. When our arms clutch many things, even good things, we can have limited space for God. When our arms are emptied, we mostly begin by pleading for restoration, perhaps even demanding it. But if we can move past the outrage and quiet ourselves, gradually, in the absence of distraction, we find ourselves being wooed by God, and find him to be a greater treasure than any we lost.

There’s much I could say on this, but one thing that’s relevant to writing involves the pressure. I’ve mentioned before how it can slow progress because of the clangour it introduces to the quiet place where shy inspiration is coaxed from hiding. I would have expected the noise to become even louder through these years of minimal progress, particularly the last 18 months, but somehow it has been displaced more and more with this vast peace. I know the peace that comes from disciplining one’s thoughts. This is something of a different nature and on a different scale – an ocean instead of a puddle – and I can only attribute it to God. In terms of writing, I have no doubt that the resultant clarity of thought will make a considerable difference to the quality and pace of future work.

The Way Out

Perhaps the first step in recovering from sickness is knowing that you’re sick – and preferably knowing what from. Since being diagnosed, I’ve done a great deal of reading on how to manage the disease, and the changes are already showing results. Evidence of this is the fact that I was finally able to finish a blog article, though it took an unusually long time and resulted in a week-long flare-up of symptoms that interrupted the work. Since the plan is full recovery, I’ll obviously need to keep away from such activities that make high demands of mind or body.
 
Unfortunately, ME has no FDA-approved cure, though rintatolimod is waiting in the wings – at a price that has wings of its own. There are, however, behaviour modifications and some meds that can reduce the chance of relapses, smoothing the way to full recovery. They are gentle nudges, but in the right direction, and direction is everything when trying to escape a bewildering thicket of illness. My neurologist said that if treatment worked, it would be about six months before I started to feel like a normal person again and another six until full recovery. So far, it looks like that estimate could prove accurate.
 
There’s a deep sense of relief in finding answers to something like this, in knowing that it’s an illness one can recover from. This realisation has pushed aside concerns that I burned myself out on a level so deep that a good day’s work would never again be possible. It also tells me that the intolerable slowness of progress reflects illness, not ability, and that when the illness passes, I should be able to get back to a normal pace of life and work. I expect that waking up to normal energy levels and a clear mind will feel like starting the day with about 20 espressos. Friends will probably need to stand back while I learn to manage the comparative overload. There will be a lot of life to catch up on.

Certainly, there are many reasons why I look forward to final recovery, but high on the list is the fact that I have many more books in me and every intention of getting them out to you at a respectable pace. As to how much is left to be done on the next book, it all depends on what I find when I’m able to get back into it. The sections produced during the years of illness were only ever written on clear-headed days, so I don’t foresee any wholesale replacement of big chunks, but I’ll almost certainly need to do a thorough consolidating rewrite – cleaning it up and ironing it all out.

My sincerest thanks to all of you who’ve stuck with me over the years of disappointing progress and not knowing (along with me) what was happening. I hope you’ll find the continuation of the series worth the cost of standing by a sick author. I’ll post again when I’m out of the thicket and working through the revisions. See you on the other side.

The second half of 2021 ended well. I was able to work slightly longer hours without hitting those dreaded brain lockups that can last for weeks. If you’re wondering why I didn’t just sign out of everything until fully recovered, it doesn’t really work that way. A complete break is a good start, but recovery from deep burnout is a long and gradual process, and increasing doses of normal routines (including work) are an important part of the healing process. The trick is in how quickly to increase those doses. Too fast and you reverse the healing. As someone who enjoys working long hours even when not pressured, it took me a long time, and several relapses, to learn the meaning of gradual. But learn I did, and my writing progress improved until I was able to end with the best six weeks of the previous eighteen months. It was a hopeful note to carry over into the new year.

I don’t often do typical new year’s resolutions, but I still find this a good time to evaluate the year that’s passed, look ahead, and make adjustments. Traditionally, things are added to a list, and added to an existing schedule. This year, I’m taking the opposite approach to the traditional one. Instead of adding, I’m scratching items off a list of possible goals. It’s the first time I’ve thought like this at the beginning of a year and it feels a bit weird, but I know it’s the right move – at least for now. Doing fewer of the things that fall into the “good but not necessary” category means more progress in the things that are good and necessary.

While I believe a rounded, balanced life is the most productive, there is a temptation to keep adding balance to a life until it looks like one of those circus acts that’s only one good sneeze away from disaster. Sometimes less is better. Another image that comes to mind is of two climbers attempting a difficult mountain with overloaded rucksacks. On reaching the point of collapse, one growls in defiance “I can do this! I can do this!” and crawls upward, though the rocks cut his hands and knees. The other climber stops, empties his pack of all the unneeded weight (and eats the chocolates), before walking on. The overloaded climber might reach the top – eventually – but he’ll be wrecked for the next stage of the hike.

Last year I tried different options of what to keep and what to discard. I found that, after a traumatic experience, it can take several attempts to locate the new point of balance that allows for both productivity and recuperation. I have a better idea now of where that point is. I’m managing my recovery more effectively, successfully avoiding relapses. I’m confident I’ll see significant improvement and better progress this year. Is anyone else still thinking about chocolates?

In terms of writing, I’ll have more to say in the next post. Apart from the mountain of general rewriting and editing I’ve been working through, I’ve also attended to the last of the out-of-reach sections. These were parts of the story that required more information than I could scour from research, so they were put off until I was able to get boots on the ground. Towards the end of 2021, I was finally able to gather what I needed. I’m mostly done reworking the text of those sections, and the difference is what I was hoping for. The once-bland scenes that ducked and tried to avoid notice are now parts of the story where I want to slow down, and where my thoughts keep returning to wander and look about. When I’m done with this, it will be a major milestone and a good time to step back and write a new blog post.

Answers to some of the comments

Will the progress bars go up again?

Unfortunately they were problematic in several ways. The biggest issue was that they stopped giving a realistic representation of the work being done. It became increasingly difficult to show progress which was mostly spread across the books, non-linear, and almost impossible to calculate or even estimate. I do understand that it’s helpful to see what has been done and what remains, so if the process becomes more linear towards the end, we may bring them back in a more manageable format.

I hope you’re working on book 2 and 3 at the same time!

Indeed I am, but in a few weeks book 3 will reach a stage where I can put it aside and turn all my attention to book 2. Book 3 still needs extensive revision, but most of the hard yards have been done. The plan is to have a much shorter gap between the releases of book 2 and 3.

Offers to support a Patreon account.

Thanks guys. I really do appreciate it. But as I mentioned at the end of the original post, I do have enough to make it through. My costs are not high. There are some book expenses but they are budgeted for. If you would like to support something we care about deeply, you could join us in the fight against human trafficking. It’s difficult to imagine a greater need. There are several excellent organisations in addition to the ones we’ve included here, so there are many options. Few of us have the knowledge or resources to get out there and step between traffickers and their targets or victims, but it’s possible to do so by providing support for these courageous organisations. When you see the estimated cost of intercepting, rescuing, or restoring someone, and you were able to give it … Let’s just say it brings a dose of reality (in a good way) when you recognise that you were part of a team that drew someone out from that nightmare.

No update for six months?

I’m sorry if the wait is difficult, but five or six months is about normal for me because I want to prioritise writing progress. As mentioned once, it takes me a fair chunk of time and thought to put blog posts together. The more I blog, the slower the book progresses. When working on a long book, milestones of progress are quite widely spaced. When working on two long books together … A lack of activity online generally means I’m deep in the manuscript with hundreds of story threads carefully laid out around me. Once they are tied off and I’m ready to move onto another phase, I can extricate myself and head over to the blog with something worth writing about.

Alpha and Beta reader requests.

I wish we could include all who are asking, but I’m afraid those lists were filled a long time ago.

Release date and audiobook

We’ll only put out a date during the final production stages. Being able to estimate a release date is something I look forward to more than you can imagine. Nobody is more eager to get the next book on the shelves than I am. To those who asked, there will be an audiobook, and yes, with the same narrator.

Don’t see your comment?

Unfortunately the spam filter sometimes gets it wrong. I’ve rescued several, but I don’t always see them in time. Those of a more personal nature I sometimes treat as email, along with those that – however thoughtful or sincerely meant – have the potential to spark blog riots. Over the years, a few of those slipped through and created a stir. We decided it would be best to keep the site free of that. But whether received as comment or personal message, thank you to everyone who reached out. I hope your Christmases were wonderful and that, even if there are challenges ahead, the new year greets you with a bright smile and a minty breath.

Hello all. As you’ve probably noticed by now, I’m not a super-prolific blogger, preferring to put available energy into the books rather than the website. But there have been so many requests for an update that I thought it was about time to hit “pause” on the book and put a blog post together.

In addition to writing progress, many of you have asked about my health. I can say that, while there have been relapses of complete shutdown from last year, they do seem to be getting shorter – from several weeks to several days. I am currently writing most days, working until I reach my capacity. It’s a bit like dealing with a phone that has battery issues. When it turns on it works more or less normally, but it only holds enough charge for a few hours before the power cuts off. Put another way, reaching the end of my capacity for the day is a concrete ceiling rather than a self-imposed limit. Failing to respect it results in no additional progress and just knocks me down a few rungs on the recovery ladder. That ceiling, while not as high as it should be, does look as if it’s lifting, though more gradually than I’d expected at the beginning of the year.

Apart from this slow return to normal stamina, health is actually really good. My spinal healing is more or less complete, allowing me to be fit and active again – a great relief. Apart from the fact that exercise is one of the best ways to vent stress, I’ve always found that a healthier body makes for a healthier mind. Healthy living is like readying a path for the mind to recover. Exercise and the outdoors are often cited as excellent therapy for the mind. For me, forest trails (or just forests without trails) are as inspirational as they are curative.

Burnout is such an imprecise term. Depending on what level of burnout someone experiences, their condition can either be slept off over a weekend, or it can present as something you’d expect to have a far more serious and less pronounceable name. You often hear people say things like “Oh, yes, I had burnout once and all I did was … and by the next week / month I was back to normal.” And it’s perfectly accurate because the term “burnout” covers the mild cases too. I have said that kind of thing myself, often. It’s confusing, then, when you hear of burned-out people who cease to function on almost every level, sometimes for years before they recover. My case wasn’t as bad as the most extreme ones, but the collision between already-advanced burnout and chronic pain and insomnia was rough. It was enough to place me firmly in the group where recovery is not expected to be quick.

When convalescence requires time, state of mind can have a significant impact. Something I’ve discovered during the past months is that an important part of the road to recovery is learning to celebrate the little victories. For some of us, it’s not just about recognising them, it’s about giving ourselves permission to celebrate them instead of despising them for being less than we’d hoped for. Because my recuperation has been slower than I’d hoped for, finding peace with my own limitations presented a significant challenge. Pressure, even self-imposed pressure, can paralyse creativity. Overcoming this and finding clarity of thought in the most pressured context I’ve known has been difficult. The concept reminds me of stress tests in self-defence training. Students usually fumble or confuse the techniques they’ve been taught until they have spent considerable time learning to focus amid a storm of distractions.

It’s taken me years to adapt to the pressure that comes with writing a series, and much of this has happened in the past year. Writers need to be able to mull over ideas. They need to be able to quiet themselves with the discipline of anglers and watch for those ephemeral sensations that defy description but inspire the most authentic words in abundance when hooked. It’s a little patience that produces a wealth of content. Some will correctly point out that, as with many things, there’s a great deal more perspiration than inspiration required in writing, but the former almost always flows from the latter. A little inspiration generally produces a lot of words. Allowing the pressure to dominate can lead to an approach that’s more akin to stamping and stabbing in the shallows without having seen any glint of silver scales. It feels like you’re being very busy and working very hard, but the yield is mostly mud. It’s that vast difference between looking productive and being productive. In the way of productivity, then, finding mental peace and clarity of focus under pressure is the first of my little victories.

Another victory has been in the matter of structure. There were several challenges in drawing everything together. Maintaining a single-POV (point of view) basic narrative while keeping an eye on distant locations and characters presented numerous hurdles. I put together a basic framework some time ago, but as I began to develop the details and settle chapters into their final shapes, some parts just didn’t mesh properly. So I turned back to an old friend – paper. Once again, cluttered charts full of idea balloons and linking arrows spilled over onto more and more pages until it all began to coalesce. The result wasn’t a rebuilding of the whole story, but a guide that allowed me to see what needed to change and how to do it. The adjustments were surprisingly minimal, but the result is a big improvement, and it now flows as it should.

When we read a finished product, the structure seems obvious, and it’s easy to imagine that it was self-evident during the writing process. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s like cutting a path through a dense jungle. The charm is in being able to go anywhere, and that’s also the difficulty. You sometimes have to get there in order to know how to get there. Then you can go back and clean up the loops, dead ends and pointless detours. When done right, the final path will feel as natural as if the original trailblazer never had a doubt, because the doubts and errors were all resolved and erased. Effortless flow through complex series is vital to a reader’s enjoyment, so resolving this most definitely qualifies as a victory.

The third is actually a positive result of a limitation. Not being able to work as fast as I’d like means I spend longer on each section. Downtime rumination is something that never stops, and when I’m covering less per day, I’m ruminating more on each scene. Ideas tend to emerge that might otherwise have been overlooked. Another aspect to this is that every day brings something more to ponder. As you walk through life you’re always gathering, whether passively or actively. Sometimes it’s in the way of dropping mushrooms into a basket, sometimes in the way of being scratched by thorns. Living provides material for thought, and thought enriches writing.

The big victory I’m looking forward to is covering the last of the miles and releasing the next instalment, but until I get there, I’m going to be grateful that though the writing miles aren’t passing by quickly, they are passing by well.

It’s frustrating to have fallen into the grip of burnout so close to the next release. The second book would have been out a long time ago. I usually don’t speak about this sort of thing, but for those who wonder if I’m just being stubborn and doing revision after needless revision, let me mention that the financial impact of this has cost me my house, car, and a rather nice umbrella that must have got lost in the move. It’s not something I shed tears over, though. There’s always good to be found in a change. In many ways, the much cheaper apartment I’m in works better as a writer’s eyrie, particularly because of the endless forests only a bowshot away. But the recent months have not been easy, and this is not a step I would have taken out of choice. What I blog about is the tip of the iceberg in terms of what this experience has been like. Please don’t think I’m dragging the process out because it suits me. Being unable to estimate a release date presents far more of a problem for me than for anyone else.

The work that remained to be done when all this hit me was the most important part, not an optional buffing. If it had been releasable at any point, I would have been dashing to get it onto the shelves. It would have saved me considerable losses. While I’m ready to grasp whatever advantages my slow pace offers, I am most definitely not slowing the pace of my own choosing. Finding the good in this situation is a case of picking berries from between thorns while working my way out of the brambles.

A good friend said something that is worth quoting. “It’s all too easy to wish your life away waiting for things to normalise sometime in the future.” In the context of non-speed-wobbling progress, you might say he hit the snail on the head. By choosing to recognise little victories and make the most of little opportunities, we are able to advance and grow in little steps. When a change does come with bigger opportunities, it will find us already poised to seize them.

Challenging times, it would seem, present a fork in the road in the way of attitude. When the clouds roll in and the window panes are streaked with rain, those streaks also mean that there are puddles waiting to be splashed through and crisp, clean air to be had in greedy gulps. Apart from being able to accomplish more, we are richer in so many ways when we can put aside the yearning for a change and instead do what we can with the days we are given. This, at least, has been my experience. If nothing else, I hope it offers some encouragement for others among us dealing with difficult circumstances.

After seven of the roughest months of my life, I’ve finally been able to get back to work. I won’t spoil the page with longwinded details of the medical nightmare that was my 2020, but some background would probably be helpful. Did anyone see that meme going around of the guy preparing for 2020 in full plate armour – and then he gets nailed by an arrow through the visor? My experience was similar, though it felt more like sheltering in a bunker only to get hit by a meteor. Constant pain and sleep deprivation did a pretty thorough job of wiping me out. I’ve never experienced anything like it, and hope I never will again.

During my early studio days I worked with a label manager whose wife had just given birth. They had produced that sort of baby that sees daylight as a sedative and then insists on doing vocal training through the night. This manager would charge into the studio blinking bloodshot and bleary eyes in a tremendous effort to look crisp and focussed. He’d sit down, ask to hear the progress on the tracks, adopt a look of fierce concentration, and be fast asleep before the second chorus. For weeks he would drop in to check on progress catch up on sleep. It was never intentional, mind you – he just couldn’t fend it off. That was one of the first memorable glimpses I had into the results of extended sleep deprivation, and since then I’ve had nothing but respect for new parents – especially those of difficult babies.

Unlike the label manager, my attempts to catch up during the day weren’t successful. For me, the solution wasn’t nuclear-powered painkillers or sledgehammer soporifics, it was a more accurate diagnosis that was made possible when symptoms became clearer. To my great relief, there was no need for further surgery. Over about two months of revised treatment and therapy, the pain receded enough that sleep could start to wash back and take its place. I’ve finally begun to recover, and the memory of trying to claw scraps of sleep from nights of teeth-gritting pain are fading. Recovery hasn’t been quite as fast or consistent as I’d like, but it is happening. The medical advice, which I need to respect, is not to overdo things at first, but I’ve reached a point where I know I’m ready to get back to writing.

Scenes from the books are starting to well up in my unconscious thoughts. Revision notes are multiplying as ideas erupt in showers of sparks, and solutions are starting to click into place. (As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, a large part of revision is creative problem-solving). This upwelling of creative inspiration is the best of signs, and I’m looking forward to the next stage of revisions.

I fully agree with J.Shamburger’s comment on the Twins post about tapping into the experience of hardship and using that to invest into characters. While I always avoid using my personal narrative in books, life experience does and, I believe, should have an influence on a writer’s voice. One of my favourite quotes is from Robert Frost: “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.” I see it applying not just to tears of pain or sadness but also tears of mirth and joy, as well as to any non-teary resonance of heart strings.

In the few brief windows of lucidity I had over the past months, the ideas I jotted down struck deeper notes than anything I’d written before. So yes, the experience will not have been for nought. Like olives being squeezed for their oil, I think rough times can bring out textures of expression that would otherwise remain locked away. Already I’ve been able to work some of these deeper notes into a few dialogues which needed attention, and the measure of improvement has been almost startling.

In spite of the gains, and though the situation was beyond my control, I wish the delay hadn’t impacted you as readers. Though I’ll never rush and ruin a book to compensate for a delay, rest assured that I still have more reason than anyone to get the next instalments out as soon as possible. The patience, reassurance and encouragement shown in the blog comments, messages and mails have, as always, been a real support for me in a difficult time. You guys have been fantastically loyal to the emerging series and I’ll be doing all I can to ensure you approve of the next releases. 

To address questions like Jarrett’s (also in the Twins blog comments) about the timeline of the next book – “will it definitely be released within 3 years? 4?”, perhaps I can say this: Firstly, my career and livelihood depend on releasing it, so I can’t work on it indefinitely. Secondly, if the next book isn’t out within half that time, I’ll be upset. (Please don’t now take the smaller number, divide by two, add the result to the date of the post, and mark it in the calendar. I am officially not committing to a date!) With this kind of writing, I’m wary of deadlines, at least until the story is complete. As Nathan commented, “A delayed [book] is eventually good, but a rushed [book] is forever bad.” The delays have been considerable and I make no pretence at being satisfied with the pace of progress over the last 18 months, but with health finally recovering, I am optimistic about the future.

I’ll post a more comprehensive update later in the year after I’ve been able to settle into a more stable routine and after I’ve clocked enough mileage in revisions that there’s something worth writing about. Until then, may the faint tapping of this author’s keyboard sound like the pattering of spring rain, hinting that even in meteor impact craters, things can start to grow again. May this be true of all of us. After the year we’ve all been through, I’m pretty sure we need it.

The alpha readers have spoken and their feedback is unanimous … We are expecting twins! No, this has nothing to do with a biological interruption to the writing. Let me explain.

Until fairly recently, splitting the book didn’t make any sense because of how it was structured – it’s something I mentioned a few times in previous posts. But without my realising it, the manuscript has grown over the past year or so into two distinct and almost equally weighted parts. This change has become so marked that reading from the first part and into the second has turned out to be like eating two different (and very filling) dinners in one sitting, rather than progressing through the courses of a single meal. The alphas also detected an issue related to this, namely density, a need to let certain parts of the story stretch out a little. But the book was already approaching the limit of what could be comfortably printed in a single volume without special thin paper and tiny text.

In spite of the problems with the single volume, I didn’t initially welcome the idea of a split. When working on a book for years, one gets attached to the image being built up, so massive changes are unsettling. On a more practical front, the labour entailed in dividing plot arcs and character arcs is not to be scoffed at. Secretly, I had hoped the alpha corrections would be minimal, but the feedback pointed to a need for detailed revision. After acknowledging that I would have to put in serious labour anyway, I set aside the objection of difficulty. The benefits of a split were immediately obvious.

The biggest factor was that constriction would no longer be an issue. A two-book arrangement would give the space to settle into better pacing, to bring back and develop some of the important characters from the first book who had been squeezed out, and to include a crucial exploration hinted at in book 1 and which wasn’t fitting into the timeline. This last possibility solved a major problem that had been gnawing at me for months. Even if it had been the only advantage, it would have been motivation enough. So the argument for a split was strong, and argument against didn’t have much to it other than a sentimental attachment to the old format.

Before committing, I needed to be sure it was possible. After about a week-and-a-half of brainstorming, I gradually saw how I could separate and re-weave the threads into a two-volume arrangement that actually worked better than the single unit – considerably better. I sat on the decision for a few days, creeping to the edge of high-dive platform, peering down, and creeping back. When I finally took the plunge of implementing the new framework into the text files, it turned out a little more complicated than I’d thought but the results were better than I’d hoped. I no longer have any doubts that it was the right move.

Now that the structure is in place, many of the new sections are filling out. In every measurable metric (other than breaking length records) this is already a noticeable improvement on the earlier version. The new book 2 looks like it will be slightly longer than Dawn of Wonder and will cover pretty much everything it was originally intended to cover. Book 3 will take us further into the story (further than the original book 2 manuscript) and it now has the space to round off some of the key trajectories initiated in book 1. This means that while the story doesn’t end with book 3, it has a kind of solid landing. By the looks of it, Book 3 is going to be around the same length as book 2, so the combined length of the two books will end up at around six standard novels. I hope that will prove a satisfying weight of pages.

The job at this stage is to finalise the content of both books before finishing up and releasing book 2. Focusing on only one of them now could result in problems later on because of how many threads run between them. After the release of book 2, the finalising and release of book 3 shouldn’t take very long.

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to represent the current work of restructuring and expanding on the progress bars. Leaving the bars static gives the impression that nothing is being done, so I’ll need to take them down to forestall an avalanche of concern. When this current reworking is done, I’ll update the site.

To those who have reached out through comments and emails, thank you so much for the understanding you’ve shown with the personal challenges of health and burnout. They have been more meaningful than you might think. My spinal recovery hasn’t progressed as smoothly as it began and sleep is proving to be something of a problem. Being woken by stabbing pain a few dozen times a night is no joke. By morning you’re exhausted.

In that context, the encouragement has been therapeutic, reducing the pressure and helping me settle into a routine that respects the present health limitations until the issue is resolved. According to the neurosurgeon, it’s simply a matter of time. Believe me when I say I’m deeply grateful for all who have chosen to recognise that the struggle is real and to support me in a context where the natural reaction is to vent frustration. As a writer, I consider myself truly blessed to have such readers.

I hope this short post answers the question of what is happening post alpha reads and that it leaves you as excited as we are about this new development. It’s a big step up for the series and I wanted to give you an early glimpse of what to expect. For my part, I couldn’t be happier with how the new structure has out. Though it will require a little more work, it will make for a better read and will actually result in more of the story emerging sooner.

Hello all. I hope this finds you safe and well.

Perhaps like me, you have been put into a more reflective state of mind by the Coronavirus outbreak. In some ways, it seemed an appropriate moment to reach out, yet at the same time I’m strangely silenced by what is happening around us. I’m almost embarrassed to release a comparatively insignificant update on a book while the world is reeling under something so much bigger. It feels uncomfortable drawing attention away from the frontlines.

And yet … another voice reminds me that the frontlines are not the only lines, that they must be supported, and that all our little contributions towards a normal world and a steady economy are going to be vital in this fight. So I’m offering my contribution, one little block in the wall. To all who are out there in the vital services, you have my respect, my gratitude, and my prayers.

With that mindset, let’s move on to book matters. If nothing else, I hope it provides a momentary distraction from all the chaos.

Looking back

The second part of last year was difficult. I’ve never before had to deal with that level of recurring burnout. I think I’d seen myself as a kind of camel, capable of traversing deserts if I set my mind to it. Turns out that I underestimated the desert and overestimated my reserves.

That fourth rewrite wasn’t mere typo correction. In some ways, there was more that went into it than any of the previous stages. It required gallons of daily creativity. I forced myself on with strict hours and daily page quotas, and when I fell short during a week, I pushed harder the next to try and make up for the shortfall. I knew my reserves were running low, but the idea was to get the book to the alpha readers and then take a break. A few hundred pages short, the camel dried out. I would sit behind the computer for hours, vaguely aware that there were problems on the page but unable to generate solutions for the most basic of them.

After seeing a few medical specialists, the message was clear. I’d driven myself to burnout. Around this time, I saw a TED talk that really hit home. I feel better after a hard day’s work so I tend to push for mileage even when exhausted – to “fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run”. For me, downtime needs to be earned. When the presenter described the results of too much work and not enough rest, she described me. It wasn’t the only source to remind me that when depleted, our ability to be creative or find creative solutions is sharply reduced, even nullified. I was advised to take several months off, but I pointed out that this would only increase stress levels because of the mounting pressure to get the book finished. So I came up with a different solution.

It was partly inspired by the neighbour’s decision to renovate. The return of screaming angle grinders and rattling jackhammers to my life worked in my favour by forcing me to search for an escape. I realised that while I simply couldn’t put the work aside for months and go on an extended vacation, I could, in a sense, do something better – I could visit the world of the story. Strictly speaking, the regions in the books are never inspired by real places, but rather seeded by the moods of many places and then built up from imagination.

One of the regions in which the second book spends much time is heavily blanketed in snow. While writing those chapters, I’d drawn from memories of mountain hikes and done a fair amount of research into the geography and conditions that would be in the setting I was building up, but I’d always felt I could do more. When I thought of travelling through snowy regions and writing from cabins, I thought of Canada. The angle grinders raised their voices in strident harmony and made the decision easy.

Traipsing texture through the pages

For the next two months, I travelled, mostly in British Columbia, writing through the days and heading out into the hills and forests for breaks and inspiration. I was careful about getting some rest time, but the freshness of the surroundings reimbursed my energy faster than I was spending it. Winter wonderlands are awe inspiring! Something of that inner child stirred and began pointing in all directions at once. “There! Go there! And there!”

I said yes to everything. I did night hikes, built snow caves and emergency shelters, made fires with wet wood, and attempted to sleep out in damp clothes with no fire, no tent, no daylight prep time, and only a blanket for insulation after not eating for three days. The object was to deny myself the advantages that the characters in the book were being denied, but I hadn’t actually intended to deny myself so many advantages. The absence of fire was owing to the recent ice rain which had given the world more of a soaking than I’d imagined. I could almost wring out the firewood into my water bottle.

At some stage in the night I think I managed to pass into a kind of frozen coma for a few seconds. Does that count as “sleeping” out? If you’re wondering, I did finally make the call to hike back after a few hours when rattling teeth informed me that my thin blanket was never going to compensate for the damp layers beneath. Next time I won’t kneel on wet snow while digging and building my shelter. It’s amazing how moisture creeps all the way through non-waterproof fabric.

It wasn’t the most pleasurable experiment, but it certainly gave me a shockingly clear perspective on what I was putting my characters through. It was worlds apart from previous nights spent under the stars when I was at least armed with a sleeping bag. Sock drying, on the other hand, was as pleasurable as the other was painful. This time I headed out before dusk and had time to scrape off the slimy bark and feather my kindling. The firewood protested and spluttered, and it steamed even more than my socks, but after about half an hour the flames were victorious. That golden warmth was almost too delicious for words. Circumstances that push us to the edge really help us value the simple comforts in life.

Spending several weeks in deep snow allowed me to try out various things in various conditions. Snow is the most diverse and fascinating substance. From dust in the wind to heavy sludge, it has such a range of characteristics that to represent it as a kind of uniform blanket, cold and white, isn’t much better than Baldrick defining the sea as a big blue wobbly thing. There are days when you can pull on boots and walk across a field of deep snow, the surface contributing little more than some musical crunching. But on other days the crust is weak and half of you suddenly disappears. Sometimes you end up plugged all the way down to your shoulders. You laboriously worm and clamber out, balance, try a few cautious steps, and vanish again. Covering fifty yards can take a very long time. Crawling helps, but you can’t keep that up for any great distance, and anyway you look ridiculous.

On one such day, I’d accepted the offer of my host’s snowshoes. He later described his nightmare of trying to creep over the crust without being swallowed alive – while a storm was breaking overhead. I’d had a long and carefree walk in the opposite direction – in his snowshoes. It left me with a curious conflict of gratitude and guilt.

The experiences brought home some of the limits of possibility, like how attempts to “move with the silence of a shadow” are feasible on some days but simply hilarious on others. There are ways to minimize noise, but without defying gravity there’s no silent drifting about for anyone when the conditions are super creaky.

There were also things I’d considered near impossible that turned out to be fairly straightforward. Moving through forests at night with overcast starlight (the darkest sky) is normally quite tricky, but when the ground is blanketed in white, the obstacles stand out clearly. Admittedly the white is more of a smudgy grey that my camera didn’t have a hope of exposing, but it’s enough to navigate by. When the moon is full, however, it’s almost like walking in daylight.

I’ve always loved night walks – without a torch which blinds you to everything outside the beam. It’s surprising how well you can see if you give your eyes a chance to adjust. During those weeks, I fell back into farm-boy ways. I climbed trees, tracked deer, sped down slopes in the dark on the world’s worst home-made toboggan (designed to match something in the book), skidded over all the black ice I could find, and generally behaved very responsibly. It was a time of de-stressing and refreshing the likes of which I haven’t had in years.

I learned that if you don’t feel like hiking back down the hill, a cheap windbreaker-type coat makes an excellent toboggan, provided the slope is steep. If the snow over the rugged ground isn’t thick enough, however, it’s considerably less enjoyable. When walking without snowshoes in fresh, waist-high snow, there is a special trick you can use to make yourself un-trackable.

As you can see, the previous statement is, in fact, bunkum. Deep powder like this compresses as you move through it. There’s no covering the canyon that results when you’re wading rather than walking. There were other days, however, when boots would leave almost no impression in the same areas. Precipitation, sun, wind, and temperature are able to transform the terrain so quickly.

The icy walks, often draped in mist, were rich with inspiration, but the crown of many a day was a softly glowing fire. When my thoughts were unharnessed and allowed to wander through the flames, details I’d been gathering tended to animate themselves and lead me into stories of their own. Some of the best ideas grew from these long evenings of unstructured musing.

While out, I made constant voice notes, always searching for compelling details to build into the story. When back indoors, I worked the new textures in while fine-tuning or correcting the ones that were already there. Here’s one of my little writing stations. There were another ten of these at various points across several hundred miles, giving a fantastic range of forests, frozen lakes, hills, streams, and mountains.

That weird block in front of the laptop is something I had to rig up to overcome the ache of tennis elbow from too much typing. I tried standard ergonomic keyboards, but none of them gave the needed relief. After about a year, the best option I discovered was to use a split keyboard and attach it to a home-made base. The result is something like a concertina, keys facing away from each other and slightly away from me. It took a bit of getting used to but this is the first time in three or four years that the tendons have been able to heal. It might not work for all, but it’s the only thing that worked for me. If you have the same issue and you’d like to give this a try, I’d be happy to send you a close up. Drop me a mail with “tennis elbow” in the subject. I’m not able to reply to all correspondence, but I’ll put a priority on this seeing as I know how debilitating it can be.

After about three months of work, the fourth rewrite was done and I’d been able to build in countless textures and some new plot-lines that necessarily grew from my discoveries. All this was sent to the alphas in addition to the pages they had been given earlier, and I was set to begin with feedback. But before I could start, there was an important hospital appointment.

A burden cut away.

Something that contributed heavily to last year’s burnout is a spinal condition I was born with. Until recently it was undiagnosed and very much in the background, but then it began a rapid advance. Two years ago I was training hard in various fighting styles (in large part so that I could write action scenes with more realism). Along with this, climbing, hiking, running and other activities were how I stayed healthy and worked off stress, but in recent months my spine got so bad that grocery shopping would make me lame. Eventually I had to put an end to all sport. In Canada I was mostly gritting my teeth to get around and I would pay for it with interest afterwards, but there was no way I was staying in my chair.

In terms of health, I fell a long way in the past few years. With chronic pain comes chronic fatigue, and with the inability to move comes an inability to work off stress. Accordingly, my stress levels and blood pressure rose to orbital levels. Surgical intervention, as any fellow sufferers will know, is not a decision you make lightly. Improvement is never guaranteed and there are serious risks. But this year my spine hit a critical point and the decision was more or less made for me. The operation, which happened just before the Corona lockdown, was successful. I’m still recovering, but I’m already able to stand without nerve pain. BP is back to normal, and there’s a marked feeling of release.

My hope is that this goes a long way to improving energy levels and productivity. Daily pain saps energy. Being freed of it is like having a dragging anchor cut away. There’s still a fair amount of tenderness from the operation and I’m not meant to be behind my desk for long hours, so I decided this would be a good opportunity to work on a blog article instead of taking the time off for convalescence.

Updates

I’m often asked why I don’t publish more regular updates. The reason is that updates only really make sense at the end of phase of development, and with a long book it takes a while to get through a phase. If I blogged several times in each phase, it would slow the book progress and would be as uninteresting as a builder giving weekly reports on a large project: Starting with the roof now. Still busy with the roof. Still the roof. The roof again. Another week on the roof … While working through a phase, I’m doing pretty much the same thing every day. It’s only when I reach the next stage that there’s a change of tack and content for an update.

In theory, I could get creative and write articles about non-related topics, but I keep coming back to something a friend once told me – “Put your main effort into your main work.” Over the past year, that advice really stood out in bold. I’ve chosen to spend a rough minimum of 95% of my workday on the book. It means that blogging, social media engagement, and emails take a back seat. I know it can be frustrating, but it does bring the release date nearer. I’m pretty sure that’s first prize for everyone.

The status of the book

Here is what a proof reader copy looks like. It’s just over 450,000 words, 1200 pages split into two for the sake of manageability. This is one of my favourite points in the process – having a complete printout that I can hold. It’s the moment when it’s no longer just a digital project, but an actual book, even if it’s still in need of editing and polishing.

During rewrites, authors typically trim the manuscript, cutting out the bloat. This was an important part of the last rewrite. On the whole, the book became quite a bit leaner. Why then, you ask, is it longer than it was last year? When I blogged about the writing process, I mentioned that rewrite 4 also involves “imbuing each page with more sparkle, magic, depth, emotion and resonance, both in characters and their settings”. It’s tempting to just trim and polish in the later stages, but while trimming tightens a story, it never imbues it with life.

Working life into a story remains my priority, even at the very end. I have found inspiration to be a shy creature, and the more opportunity it has to find its place, the more of it I’m able to coax onto the pages. In most cases it’s a line here and a line there. In some cases it’s an entirely new set of chapters, though I was extremely selective with those. I included significant expansions only when their absence robbed the book of something vital.

Bloat is not a function of length; it’s a stylistic problem – unnecessary words. I long ago realized that, in terms of length, I needed to think of this book as a journey or an experience rather than a typical novel. But that is still no justification for puffy sentences or dead passages. Accordingly, I sliced out hundreds of pages worth of content that didn’t make the grade. The book didn’t grow by 30 000 words – it grew by around 90,000 (the length of a novel) and lost 60,000 to the knife.

While the printed stack now stands taller, it’s also considerably more balanced as a story. For those who don’t remember the comparative details in the previous article, the current word count of just over 450,000 would be 5 times the length of an average novel – it’s the main reason why the book has taken so long.

If you can’t picture that without a page count on book-size pages, it would translate to 1390 pages in mass market paperback, and about 1150 pages when using a larger page format. As mentioned before, most independent authors are limited in print to 1050 pages, but we’ll find a way to make it look good on the page.

Compared to other fantasy works, Book 2 is now about the same length as the complete Lord of the Rings trilogy.

How long should the alphas and betas take?

As with all the steps so far, this is impacted by length and complexity. Moving at a normal pace, each stage will naturally take 5 times longer than if the book was the length of a regular novel. There are always those test-readers who will gallop through the book in a week, but faster readers discover fewer errors, making for less helpful feedback. In the past, I’ve begun with the feedback of quick readers while waiting for the notes from the more in-depth readers who often move back and forth through the pages to check things that are worrying them. I’ve asked them to send notes in stages, so there’s no unnecessary slowdown.

The alpha stage, because it deals with a much rougher version of the manuscript, encounters far more obstacles than the beta stage. Finding problems isn’t really what takes the time, it’s addressing those problems. While typos require a few seconds each, more serious issues can involve changes that must be tracked through a thousand pages or more. I’m hoping there isn’t too much of that, but experience tells me there will be some. The alpha stage is perhaps the least predictable of the stages until all the feedback is in, but I’ll do my best to represent progress every few weeks by adjusting the bar as realistically as I can.

The beta readers will be presented with a much cleaner book and so their reading time is likely to be quicker. The editing time on beta feedback is also likely to be less than with alphas.

Trying to rush for my own personal deadline almost killed me last year, so I won’t promise dates, even to myself. I will promise, though, to work as quickly and as well as I can and to get the book into your hands the moment I believe it’s the best I can make it.

Do you have a title for the sequel?

I have a very short list and a lead contender. The trouble with making it public is that it spreads over the internet. Changing it can create a mess. I’d like to keep my options open until the artwork is done.

Does progress match your own expectations?

Not at all. I wanted it out years ago. I mentioned elsewhere that book 2 was originally meant to be shorter than book 1. It’s now twice as long as I’d planned. But when a book takes on a life of its own, stamping it down to a predetermined size is probably the worst thing a writer can do. Has it been worth the cost? Definitely! The book isn’t just longer, it has significantly more breadth, depth, and vitality than I’d foreseen when drafting it. As far as reading experiences go, I think it is the right step up from the debut.

Will COVID-19 speed up progress or hinder it?

This is becoming quite a regular question, so it’s probably helpful if I answer it here. Social distancing has no influence on my speed. I’m already working as many hours a day as I can manage, and being unable to see friends – important as it is during this stage of the pandemic – doesn’t improve productivity, it just imbalances life. I certainly feel the weight of what’s happening in the world, but the distress is not paralysis.

As to the alpha readers, some have more time on their hands and some have less due to various circumstances like home schooling. But seeing as reader feedback is staggered while I work on the fixes, it probably won’t make a difference to the timeline. As to the rest of the process – audiobook recording, graphics studios, printing etc. – it’s not really possible to predict yet what the impact will be. I’m choosing to be optimistic that we’ll find ways to around the limitations without any significant lag.

In closing

I hope this answers most the most pressing questions and gives a decent idea of progress to date. At the next milestone I’ll post again. Until then, stay safe and healthy everyone. Let’s hope it’s not too long before our communities are whole again.

Greetings everyone!

Over the past few years I’ve had the
pleasure of corresponding with many of you, but recently I’ve been unable to
keep up with all the questions. I thought the best way to stay in touch would
be a blog post that gives in-depth answers to the questions I get most often.
Sometimes the real difficulty as a reader is not knowing the details of what is
happening – or if anything is happening at all! I’ll do my best to give
clarity, and hopefully dispel any misgivings on that last point.

Let’s begin. Perhaps the question that
(understandably) gets asked the most is:

Q1. Why on earth is book 2 of The Wakening taking so long???

In short,
there are three reasons. The main reason is the length of the book, the second
is a delayed start due to the post-release demands of book 1, and the third is
the personal challenge of settling into a writing career. I think this question
deserves a detailed answer, so I’ll give each part a good chunk of space.

Q1,
part 1. About the book

The sequel
to Dawn of Wonder has grown into an exceptionally long book. At around 415,000
words, it’s longer than anything by epic writers like Jordan, Rothfuss, Hobb,
Erikson, Feist, or King, and longer than anything by Sanderson except Oathbringer.

Most people don’t relate to word count, but unfortunately, page count isn’t a reliable measure because different layouts can hold anywhere from 200 to 500 words on a page, sometimes breaking even those limits. There are many books on the digital shelves reporting massive page counts when the audiobooks (which can’t be stretched the same way) are of average length. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with low word densities – they are easy on the eye – but it makes comparisons problematic.

It’s still possible to give some idea of page count using standard industry prints. If I use the word-density of popular mass-market paperbacks by Jordan or Hobb, book 2 would end up at around 1,280 pages. For interest, if I were to use the lower densities seen in the same genre, it would end up at well over 3,000 pages. I think that illustrates the problem with this metric. For better or worse, there is a page limit of 1050 with the best indie printing option, so I’ll be confined to the more expensive 6×9 format which fits more words on the page.

If word count still means nothing to you, a few benchmarks might help: Novels take over from the shorter novellas at 40,000 words, and most novels are between 70,000 – 110,000, averaging around 90,000. Fantasy novels, according to most publisher references I’ve looked at, tend to be 90,000 – 120,000, occasionally reaching past 180,000 words. Publishers don’t generally like such long books because the profits are small. Recently, a few well-known fantasy authors have published several books over 250 000 words, occasionally passing the 400,000 mark. But there are not many of these, and they fall into a very small category of extraordinarily long books. A volume of 415,000 words – my current manuscript – contains more than 4 ½ average novels.

I had
originally intended to get the book out in two years, but when it more or less
doubled in size, it also began to develop a breadth that required far more
world building than originally estimated. I’d always thought of book 2 as the
lightest of the books in the series, a fast-paced adventure, but not an epic
world-building project. It was supposed to be something of a break for its
author. But book 2, it appears, had plans of its own. The difference between
what I set out to write and what the story has grown into has taken me entirely
by surprise. I often feel a little overawed when I look up at this giant
towering over my desk, flexing its arms. Don’t get me wrong – I’m elated with
what I’m seeing, but it has meant a great deal more work than anticipated.

Well, if it is so long, isn’t it bloated? you might ask. Bloat isn’t the reason for the size. I’ve actually done a great deal of trimming. It’s big because there is A LOT that happens. This is the length that allows the reader to dive into the adventure and journey with the characters. It’s also the length that lets a tight plot breathe and gives space for us to see the world of the story awaken a little more. Just like a panoramic shot is the best way to capture some mountain ranges, long books are the best way to tell some stories.

It’s occasionally suggested that I split the book up, but as I’ve mentioned before, it just wouldn’t be right for this series. I feel that each of these books needs to complete a cycle. There’s a difference between ending with anticipation and cutting off in mid-stride. Splitting this book would feel like the latter. With a split, I would be able to reduce the waiting time to half, and each half of the book would still be longer than most epic fantasy novels. But length isn’t what makes a volume seem complete, and this one holds together well at its current length. When I even consider slicing the book apart, it’s as if it raises an eyebrow, steps forwards, and says, “Really? Let’s see you try that.”

Book 2 is also a vastly different kind of book to the first and has required more work per page. Apart from the fact that it’s a whole new culture in a section of the world that is quite foreign to me (unlike the settings in the first book that were easier to relate to and build from memory), I’ve also had to learn a great deal before being able to pen many of the sections. Some of this has been knowledge in various technical fields, but there are other aspects that have to do with abilities rather than research. An example would be learning to better represent female characters – which is crucial to the heart of the story. (This is the reason why I chose female leads for my thesis book).

Often the story that begins a series is a variant of the coming-of-age or coming-of-ability/identity themes. Authors are equipped to write them simply by having grown up – hopefully. But moving along with the story after this phase can bring about a need for skills or tools that might not have been necessary earlier on. Many of you have written to warn me about sequels that feel rough-hewn or work as “skinny bridges” to the next book, and it is one of the things that motivated me to grow the toolset instead of just hacking out the new and tricky shapes I wasn’t altogether equipped for.

The question about the time being taken is
sometimes asked like this: If other
writers can produce books in shorter times, why not you?

To make the question applicable, we’d need to eliminate short books, long books that don’t represent a standard you’d want to read, books from other genres that take less work such as children’s books, and authors with experience who have their whole production process set up.

But even then, the question implies
something that’s not altogether true, namely, that a competent or conscientious
author would write fast. Here are three quick examples I saw on my shelves. After
the Hobbit was released, Lord of the Rings, which is about 455,000 words long,
took 12 years to write and another 5 for all the changes and edits – 17 years.
The original Earthsea trilogy was
four years in the making, but the total length is just under 164,000 words.
That pace equates to ten years on my manuscript. The Last Unicorn, considered by Rothfuss to be the best book he has
ever read, took Beagle 6 years to write, though it’s not even 70,000 words
long. That would result in 36 years spent on book 2 of The Wakening. Beagle actually spent 18 years on his next book!

Before you worry that I’m settling in for a few decades of leisurely revision, let me say that I’m not making a case for extreme time frames, but I do recognise that some of the most competent authors, of whom there are many more examples, wrote very slowly and carefully when producing some of our best books. Time spent away from the manuscript on other things, even other projects, was undoubtedly part of the process – allowing new ideas to germinate, enabling them to return with fresh inspiration and clear perspective. But whatever the particular routine, it’s clear that, for them, it wasn’t a dash to the finish.

There’s no standard speed out there when
quality is the goal. Sometimes great books have been written in one unbroken sprint,
but it’s not common, especially not with long manuscripts. Rushing has produced
many a forgettable book – and I’m all too aware that I am not above producing
one of those. On the opposite extreme is something that takes so long to launch
that by the time the curtains open for the great reveal, most people have gone
home. So with the needs of the book and of the readership in mind, I am doing
my utmost to produce the best sequel I can as quickly as I am able.

Q1, part
2. About the stages since book 1

The initial release of Dawn of Wonder was in May 2015, but this being my first book, I learned a lot from the feedback. I began work on the sequel but was soon pulled back to the first book, revising, correcting, adding chapters and re-doing the no-budget graphics. The new versions of front and back covers just didn’t look right when trying to assemble them from stock images, so I worked with a 3D-modelling company to build Kultûhm and the stone giant according to the text, with film-style graphics. It took a long time (and a lot of money), but the result is an actual glimpse of a scene in the story rather than a loose approximation.

Here are the early and later stages in building the elements to match the text:

Around
this time, I found it necessary to put a few months into marketing – the
unpleasant side of being an independent author, but necessary if you want to write
full time. Just when everything settled down, I signed an audiobook contract
which led to a new vein of preparation and revision.

There
are certain unique requirements for audiobooks. A well-known example is the
need for speech attributers. When looking at a page, a new line lets you know
when speakers have changed, but when listening, the modification of a narrator’s
tone or accent isn’t always enough to convey the switch of speakers, especially
when the two in conversation have similar voices or accents. You can end up
getting completely lost, not knowing who is speaking, hence the need to revise
with this and other points in mind.

The work on
book 1 finally ended when the last format (audiobook) was released in Feb 2016.

The rest of 2016 and 2017 were put into the
manuscript of book 2. After a good start to the following year, problems with my
work environment became intrusive (mentioned in the previous 2 posts).
Accordingly, I drew up plans for a home renovation which could be done quickly
and without my involvement. Some of you will be smiling pitying smiles at my
naivety. No, it wasn’t quick, and I wasn’t allowed to stay out of it. After
three months of disruptions, it was starting to look as if I’d given the
contractors lifetime employment. The money was vanishing and the house wasn’t
appearing. I was heading for bankruptcy and homelessness. In desperation, I dived
in and finally ended up managing the whole project, regularly pushing 90-100
hour weeks to hurry things along. In the end, it took almost 3 times longer
than promised and would probably still be going if I hadn’t taken over.

In all, I’ve had around 2 ½ years to work on book 2, meaning that if it had been similar in length to book 1, it would probably already be on the shelves.

Q1, part
3. About settling into a writing career

I didn’t know that second-book syndrome was actually a thing until I experienced it. (A Cloud in Her Eye, though it had to be finished before book 2, was actually started after it, so it’s always felt like a third book.) I thought the writing of a second book would be easier than the first. It’s not the case. With the first book there’s no pressure. With the second, there was more pressure than I’ve ever known for anything else.

It’s a
little like pacing behind the stage curtain, trying to memorise lines that were
just handed to you. You can hear the eager murmur of hundreds of voices on the
other side of the cloth, and the stage manager keeps telling you to hurry up
because they’re about to start and he wants to kick off with a roll of the
kettle drums. You consider asking him if it’s possible to swallow kettle drums,
because if he interrupts you again he’s going to find out. Then someone parts
the curtains to look for her mum and there’s a sudden shushing of the crowd.
You stare at your page, hovering over the first word, realising with an
upwelling of doom that you can no longer read English. Death by mortification presses
in, and just as you steel yourself for one last desperate attempt, the stage
manager pops up and says, “Kettle drum roll?”

Even though anticipation is good, it comes at a price. The pressure of second book syndrome has shipwrecked many an author’s follow-up. I get a constant stream of messages begging me not to let the same thing happen to this series. Reading about the issue has helped a great deal. Knowing that it’s real is the first step towards dealing with it. I’ve found getting over it to be similar to the process of acclimatising. At first, the pressure robs you of your ability to focus, leaves you dizzy and even nauseous. Concentration is a fraction of what it was. In the early stages, it was nearly impossible to return to the same stillness in which I wrote book 1. But slowly I’ve adapted and grown used to the new normal.

The new workspace has had a far bigger impact than expected. Perhaps, because of my forest-mountain-horseback childhood, the feeling of space has helped to unlock my imagination and uncramp my thoughts.

I recently moved an old school desk up to my library loft where I’ve started working. This is what it feels like: (without the all-too-likely fog of ravenous mosquitoes)

I’ve always
loved heights – almost as much as climbs required to reach them. This little
raised perch in the library gives just enough elevation to make it feel like an
escape, a secret place where long hours of work are actually invigorating.

It took time to adapt to the pressure – and it’s been a dynamic adaptation because, every day, the pressure is a little more. Even early on, I was getting emails from people saying they would never buy another book from me because I made them wait too long. Apparently anything over 18 months is considered unacceptable by some readers. (This is where page count is my enemy because books a third of the length, that can be written in a third of the time, are often stretched over 800 or more pages, making them appear similar in length.) When you’re sweating blood at the keyboard, messages like that are profoundly counter-productive, having a similar effect to a hail of bricks – and I often get several in a week. While I really do understand the frustration behind those emails, I know it doesn’t help if I let that kind of feedback dictate my state of mind. At first it did, and it slowed me down by creating a panicked haste that completely undermined creative focus. But I’ve got better at shrugging off the bricks and carrying on.

Since starting work in the new library, I’ve finally settled down and discovered that quiet place again. I’m not only able to write with clear focus for long hours, but I wake up every morning looking forward to it. This acclimatisation, aided in no small part by the workspace, has been a central part of the battle for the sequel.

Q2. What does your routine look like? Is there a problem with work ethic?

I can see where this question is going. If
there’s no one to watch over a writer, wouldn’t he fill his days with tele and YouTube
and social networks, writing it off as “research” because he’s learning about
stuff – people and places and cool ways to frighten cats and other things which
might come into a scene one day – proving that it was all an investment.

As with several friends who work for
themselves, driving myself to burnout is far more of a problem for me than a
lack of motivation or a bad work ethic. Following a fairly severe burnout, I settled
on an average of 8 or 9 hours a day on the manuscript. Beyond that, the
creativity starts to lose its freshness. Occasionally, when on a roll, I’ll
work much longer, but that can adversely affect the next day.

Writing isn’t like any of the other jobs I’ve
done where I can maintain 14-hour days for months without dropping standards.
Writing doesn’t just leave you tired, it leaves you empty. Pulling out words
faster than you can regrow them results in half-formed, mediocre prose, no
matter how fiercely you urge yourself on. There are times an author is bursting
with inspiration, writing for days or weeks almost without sleep, but nobody
sustains that for long without serious consequences. It’s usually the project
that suffers the most.

My weeks are structured to squeeze out the greatest volume of good words possible without compromising the following week’s work. In the final stages of editing, I can push the hours because the work tends to be more corrective and less creative, but even then I’ve found there’s a need for healthy moderation. Rest is vital, so I always take off Sundays. Last year there were no holidays and almost no weekends off. The burnout was rough. I won’t be doing that again if I can help it.

Reading fills the majority of my spare time. I read a few hours every evening and listen to audiobooks during lunch breaks, when driving, cooking, or doing chores. I try to pour words in whenever I get the chance. I’m one of those readers who’s always busy with about 20 or 30 books at once. They cover technical non-fiction, history, and fiction in several genres – both the heavy and the light. Reading is almost always a form of study. There’s no aspect of writing that can’t be improved by reading.

Q3. Currently,
what is happening? The progress bars seem to have slowed down. Does that mean
you are working less?

No. The opposite, actually. Over the past three months, I’ve been going through hundreds of notes I’ve been making over the last year or two. One of them read something like “The two most important sections are rubbish.” It’s the kind of note you want to delete, burn, bury and forget. The chapters weren’t as terrible as my note suggested, but they failed to realise potential that was still locked away.

Originally, I’d opted for a version of the story that would reduce the length and writing time. During my house renovations, the story details that had been filling my thoughts settled, revealing a big picture that was wanting in places. Something magical was crying out to be released, something buried under the existing plot. The trouble with fixing it wasn’t just the weeks of imagination, research and problem solving that would be required, but the need to track all the changes through to the end of the book.

I fought the decision for weeks, arguing
that it would take too long, but eventually, I decided it had to happen. Three
evasive chapters were relieved of their posts and the gaps were slowly filled
with eleven new chapters that venture into some of the most mysterious and
dangerous places yet seen in the series. It was well over a hundred pages of
tedious work. These were without doubt among the most difficult sections to put
together but will likely end up being the most rewarding to read.

Something I’ve learned is that nobody wants to merely know what happens; we want to experience it. And unless the story is drawing us in, it isn’t really fulfilling its purpose. The majority of what I’ve been doing recently has been centred around just this, making the scenes bigger, the secrets darker, the threats more present, and the people more real. I’ve been replacing passages written in the early months of work, when my pace was being dictated by pressure.

I decided that this rewrite would be the one in which all the major improvements would happen. The improvements are additional to the requirements originally set out for the revision, so it’s not easy to display the work done by means of progress bars. I try, however, to give as honest a representation as possible. What’s important to realise is that because so much is happening in this revision, small increments indicate significant progress.

Q4. Is all this work
necessary? Aren’t you over-polishing?

These improvements aren’t about polish that will only be noticed by some, but about content that will be noticed by all. Nobody would vote for the old version.

Q5. Will the audiobook be released at the same time as
the ebook and paperback?

Yes. We’ll schedule most of the artwork and hardcopy formatting to coincide with the audiobook recording so the audio production doesn’t cause a delay.

Q6. Will there be hardcovers?

Yes, hardcovers will be available for all the
books, but there’s quite a bit of work that goes into the formatting, print
testing and so on. We’ll most likely get those done during the recording of the
audiobook.

Q7. When will it be released? Can you give us any kind
of estimate?

I’m not evading when I say I can’t give a date
yet. Unlike more seasoned authors, I haven’t done this often enough to know
exactly what lies ahead. There are even experienced authors who avoid giving
deadlines. It’s a point in quality, not a point in time I’m aiming for, but what
I can say is that I want it to be finished just as much as anyone, so you can
be assured that I’m trying to reach that point as soon as possible.

Q8. Translations?

They will definitely happen, but not before the next book is released. Hopefully, by the time the third and possible fourth books appear, the translations will begin catching up. That’s what we’re aiming for.

Q9. What about a shorter book, something around the
main series?

I’ve considered that, but I’d rather give full
attention to the main series. Maybe later.

Q10. Can I join the Alpha and Beta readers?

I wish I could say yes. There’s a limit beyond which the lists are not manageable. We reached that limit some time ago and had to stop accepting any more. I should point out that if you want to be hit with the full experience of a book and get the maximum impact on first read, you don’t want to be a test reader. It’s only if you have a thing for being part of repairs, of digging for typos and other mistakes. For some, that actually spoils the read, so it’s definitely not for everyone.

Q11. I’m an aspiring author. Any advice?

Fantastic!

Before getting to the question, I should point out that there are authors with more experience who are better equipped to answer it, but I’ll give you the advice I was given, along with some points to consider.

Firstly, writers shouldn’t drink black coffee
like in the picture because it tastes horrible. Don’t do it. Your first two
hundred words of every day will come out bitter and bent with the anguish of a
tortured palate. Okay, okay all you true-connoisseur tar-drinkers preparing
fiery words for the comments section, I’ll leave your stained cups alone. Serious
advice then. Here we go.

Read a lot and write a lot, but don’t just read to see what happens next, and similarly, don’t just write to tell what happens next. Read slowly and carefully to understand how language can be used, how the story was told, how characters were brought to life. Mull over delicious sentences that just tickle the ear and get a feel for what makes good writing spark and flicker to life. If you’re reading a bad book, there’s a great deal to learn there too. I sometimes frown at a page and think, “This is awful. And it reminds me of something I wrote.” I recognise many of my own mistakes by encountering similar mistakes elsewhere. It’s the perspective thing – it’s always more difficult to have perspective on your own work, so it’s really helpful when you can see your efforts through the words of others. (I give you full permission to learn from my mistakes.)

It’s also important to learn about writing. Lifting the hood and staring with great concentration at an engine won’t get you far if you can’t name a single part beyond the spark plug. There are many great guides on writing out there. Study a few of them – and I really mean study. I’d also advise getting a firm grip on grammar and punctuation, not because I was an English teacher, but because it’s more or less impossible to find good prose that isn’t also structurally sound – and editors are not going to rewrite every sentence. There’s a difference between bending rules we know, and pretending to bend them because we haven’t the foggiest notion of what they are. Nobody is fooled.

You don’t need to learn everything at once.
Learn as you go. It’s probably the only effective way you can learn.

When you write, enjoy it! Don’t lose sight of
the sense of magic in the process, and if you do, fight to get it back. But
then – brace yourself for this – be willing to hear and learn from the comments
of readers. You might not always agree with the feedback, but one thing is
certain: if you’re arguing with criticism, you’re not learning from it. If the
division between what you agree with and what you don’t is the same division
between complements and criticisms, there might be a problem. Critical feedback
is golden if it helps you improve – and all of us have room for improvement. Comments
that are overwhelmingly negative, however, are just destructive, so make sure
you get balanced feedback, even if you have to ask for it. But don’t scrape the
veggies into the bin when nobody’s looking. They’ll do you good.

This is just a thimble of thoughts, but if you’re serious about writing, buy a few how-to books and get stuck in. And persevere! There’s work involved, but the whole process can be a thoroughly rewarding one.

Q12. Anything to ease the waiting? Can we have A Cloud in Her Eye?

It was never the plan to release Cloud before book 2, but when people started asking for it, I decided there wasn’t any point in holding it back. So we’ll release it – all versions together – around the middle of July.

Cloud is a very different kind of book to anything in the fantasy series, but it was my training ground for certain character aspects of book 2, so it might prove interesting if you’re keen to see a different angle of what’s gone into the making of the next instalment of The Wakening. No, these aren’t characters that will be incorporated into the fantasy series in some altered form, but they should prove entertaining companions in their own right. While book 2 is very long, Cloud is very short, around one tenth the length of book 2, just crossing the line from novella to novel. That was partly due to university requirements, but as with book 2, this is the length that feels right for the story. It’s a quirky little tale with some unexpected turns.

We’ll drop a notification into the inboxes of everyone who has subscribed. If you haven’t subscribed and want to get the links for this as well as all other book releases, add your email address in the “upcoming releases” box.

Back to the library loft

I’ll post again when book 2 reaches the next stage, but for now, I’ll be pretty much consumed by the manuscript of book 2. As before, I do apologise for not being more communicative. I have only have so many words in me per day, so the more I put into correspondence, the less I have for the book. And I think everyone would prefer that the book takes precedence. Until the next stage then …

Many of you have been asking if the library is done and, if so, how it turned out. I thought I’d interrupt the writing for a quick tour. In short, it’s finished and functional, though still in need of a few things. As you can see from the empty upper shelves, number 1 on that list is books. Am I the only one who believes that empty shelves just look wrong? A lack of space in recent years has meant that almost all my purchases have been in digital format, but now it’s time to start building the real book collection again. Most of the books stacked here have just been pulled out of long term storage. A few are still coughing and dusting themselves off. It’s been something of a reunion with these almost-forgotten friends.

Here are a few glimpses of the process.

In the photo above, the original (tiny) room can be seen on the left. One of the internal walls has already been moved slightly outward. The shoddy brickwork, if any of you construction types are wondering, was redone, and the foreman who clearly fancied himself a wizard – based on how he left that gable hanging there by magic – was not buried under a hail of bricks before we were able to pull it down safely.

At this stage, all the walls have been moved outward, borrowing from rooms on two sides as well as travelling into a chunk of dead garden space. The clerestory windows up on the left were put in to provide all-day light and winter warmth. The far end of the room opens out with some unusual angles because of that rock which would have required half a dozen elephants and a wheelbarrow of explosives to move. Fortunately, I like the rock. The resultant room is P shaped (the letter, not the vegetable).

For the layout of fixtures, I drew up numerous arrangements, most of which created tight little aisles between high shelves that would have been dark and stuffy. In the end I had to concede that I didn’t have the space for a real library, and what I needed was the feel and functionality rather than the traditional design. So I settled on a more open approach.

Furnished:

The room is quiet, airy, and full of natural light. The downstairs area is built to be shady and cool in summer and the upstairs sunny and warm in winter, so no need for artificial temperature control. I’m one of those people who likes to feel the change of seasons – within limits. Hotel-like environments aren’t for me. First thing I do when checking in is throw open the windows and gasp.

With the movement of air through the library comes an occasional movement of flies and mosquitoes. Enter the zapper racquet. It’s the most fantastic work break. I cease to be a writer and become a hunter, stalking, setting up ambushes, and pouncing with deadly cunning. Once the battle is done, I settle behind the keyboard and get back to work, cherishing an image of six charred legs pointing skyward.

Working here is an unusual experience. I find I hardly get tired. It’s such a contrast to the claustrophobic, stressful spaces I had before. Sometimes I even seem to gain energy while working, even during long days that start before the sun hits the windows and carry on late into the night. And the next morning I can’t wait to dive back into it. Productivity is beyond anything I’ve managed before, and it’s not slog work; it all feels refreshing, which naturally leads to better ideas and more inspired writing. Much as I lamented the time-cost of building, I have to say that I can see this is already starting to pay off. It’s the book factory I hoped for.

The desk is a simple table which, like the stairs and mezzanine level, is made from reclaimed scrap wood. It’s almost 8ft long which allows me to have several workstations open at any time. Mostly that has to do with the study and research side of things.

Obviously there’s still a lot that can be done to finish the library off. For example, I really need to get a suit of armour – with a few servo motors and a remote control so I can make unsuspecting visitors jump or scream, according to their preference. The room is simply incomplete without that feature. But this and other such points of beauty will need to wait. It’s time for this room to earn its place in the house.

In the previous blog post, I wrote of tools and spaces. The space has certainly worked out to be all I’d hoped, something for which I’m tremendously grateful. What then of the tools? I’ve often been asked why, if I’m already writing books, I decided to enrol in formal study. Was it necessary? Was it even a good idea?

Many artistic people say they don’t want to learn from institutions of established knowledge because of how it might rob them of their unique expression. As an English teacher, I used to occasionally discover writing so unique and original that it couldn’t be deciphered. Prose is not like modern visual art. When words aren’t clear, they generally aren’t effective, and making meanings clear is not as simple as one would expect. There are rules and guidelines – especially for the written word as opposed to the spoken word – that can’t be stumbled on but must be learned. A classic example in the world of commas is the difference between “Let’s eat, Grandma,” and “Let’s eat Grandma.” Even the smallest details of punctuation can have colossal impacts on meaning.

But this is not where it ends. Achieving clarity is a bit like making your first palatable meal. That’s not where learning stops; it’s where the real learning begins. Just like the same dish prepared by different cooks can be anywhere on the scale from swallowable to mouthwatering, writing can range from bland to stirring. I don’t think anyone could ever say they have fully mastered an art form. there’s always something else to learn.

So while I would agree that no artist should want his or her natural expression altered and made more like someone else’s, any voice can be more fully developed, made to sound both better and more like itself.  Of course, formal study isn’t the only way, and for some people it might not even be the best way, but I guess I just have a fondness for universities. After all, they have such beautiful libraries!

Returning to Book 2’s manuscript after the final submission, I’ve noticed a difference in how I work. As with the image from the previous blog post, it really does feel like working with a sharper knife. It was always my hope to make the second book better than the first, and I decided that if it meant going through a programme that would grind a keener edge to my story-carving blade, it would be worth it in the end.

So, after passing through the maelstrom of owner-building and the grinder of studies, I think you can imagine how eager I was to get back to the revisions. These were characters I’d missed, places I wanted to resume exploring, and pages I needed to refine. Not wanting to overlook anything, I re-started the revisions on page 1 and went deeper than in any previous rewrite. For the first time, I feel confident that what’s emerging from the current rewrite will be ready for the alpha readers.

That’s all for now. I need to get back to my friends who are currently in a meeting with an underground agent, and I’m required before they can carry on. Liru is fixing me with an eye that’s several degrees sharper than any blade in the room – seen or unseen. I linger here at my peril. I’ll post another update when we’re further along in the process. Until then, thanks so much for the patience and support. I’m doing all I can to make sure it’s rewarded.

“I’m willing to tell you. I’m wanting to tell you. I’m waiting to tell you.”

Often that’s how I feel about book 2. And the setting in which that line was spoken has a lot to do with where this post is going.

Over the past three years, most of the environments I’ve had to work in have been challenging, each in its own way. At the previous rental, there were children that would play beneath my window. Slightly intrusive, but not unpleasant. Then one of them would stub a toe or scrape a knee or just lose a game. Apparently, the best angle for maximum catharsis when crying was an upward one, more or less in the direction of my window. Then the kids finally went to school and the builders started work – about ten feet from the same window. Every day for months. Earplugs were no match. At times it was so bad I drove to parks and coffee shops and so on, but without much success.

It was becoming obvious that I needed a better work environment. None of the affordable rentals I looked were much better, but the option of buying looked like it would cost more time than I wanted to take from the writing of book 2. So I chose to muscle through it. Until it got worse.

While endeavouring to get this book finished, I’ve had to move 4 times, mostly due to the rentals being sold beneath me. Currently, the space I’m working in is so small, most of my things, book collection included, are in storage. I don’t do well when I can almost touch opposing walls in the room where I sleep and work, and I was struggling here. As much as I wanted to avoid another disruption, I realized it was time to set things up properly, find a space where long hours would not be stressful, a space where I could read broadly, think deeply, and write with full immersion.

I spent a week house sitting. Writing in a medium-sized dining room with a garden view was an eye-opener. (That was the pic in a post at the beginning of the year.) I worked long hours, yet the hours never felt heavy. Environment, I concluded, has a bigger influence on productivity than I’d allowed for.

I decided the ideal space would be a biggish room full of natural light, capable of holding lots and lots and lots of books, a room that would feel less like and office and more like a small library. That struck a chord. The idea of a writer working in a miniature library has a kind of logic in the same way that mechanics are usually found in garages or farmers in fields, but there’s more to it for me. It isn’t only the ready access to literary resources that appeals, though it is a big appeal; I just find libraries conducive to thought.

One of the libraries I never grew tired of working in was the Ussher at Dublin Trinity College. I snapped this pic a few years ago while doing research as a visiting postgrad for an earlier degree. (The half year I spent in Dublin was largely the inspiration behind A Cloud in her Eye).

I used to hang over this banister and drink in the view. Peaks, clefts, dizzy heights … Alright, it’s not quite the same thing as a spine of mist-wreathed mountains, but it’s still impressive.

The Ussher library, however, wasn’t the first to completely grip my fascination. That prize goes to this one, which I saw as a wee tyke.

Remember it? If you’ve seen the movie adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, it should look familiar. It’s the lair of Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady, where Alfred Doolittle spoke the opening lines of this post. This place has always seemed to me the most ideal environment for writing. There aren’t many who could afford anything like this, but a scaled down version without all the costly trimmings …

Over the past few years, this idea has been growing from an impractical fancy to more of a plan, and a few months ago, I decided to make it happen. So if you’re wondering why the progress bars haven’t shifted much recently, that’s the reason. In reality, work hasn’t altogether stopped on the book, but I don’t really log progress when I’m gathering ideas or making notes for new sections, which is what’s happening. More on that later.

Part of me wants to apologize for another delay in getting the second book out. But then I realize that the things that have taken the most time – studying writing and making a suitable workspace – are for the reader no less than for me. This is about playing the long game, taking the time now to set things up for the rest of the series, so that the coming books will be the absolute best I’m able to produce.

Perhaps I could have delayed building until the release of book 2, but it would have simply meant a longer wait for book 3, and book 2 would have suffered. The debut, if you’re wondering, wasn’t written in a stressful setting. I was in an area that had views of fields and horses and so on. (The Torval’s bow video was filmed there).

There are readers who insist that I hurry up and release, some with ultimatums and hostile language. I get the frustration, but I’m doing all I can to hit the balance between quality and speed. I suppose being urged to hurry is normal in today’s world, but something that has surprised me is the number of emails and comments from readers pleading with me not to launch the second book until it’s all it can be, to take the time to get it right. I really am grateful for that understanding. It’s pretty stressful when you turn off the machines in order to upgrade the factory instead of rushing ahead with the job, so those words of support help more than you know.

While we’re on the topic of correspondence, I need to mention email. Generally, I like mountains, but this is one I’m struggling to climb. If you are one of those who is still waiting for a reply to an amazing heart-felt letter, please be patient. Even if I worked on email full time, it would take a few months for me to get through everything.

Book 2

I’m really happy with where the manuscript is at, but stepping away for a while has allowed me to see how some things could be improved. For example, senses of place and culture need many layers in order to come across as real, and I’ve detected a few spots where these layers could use a bit more weaving. I’ve been gathering ideas like someone netting butterflies. Or bats. Which are more interesting. Using my bat collection, I plan to work a little more on the consistency and depth of culture as well as the individual personalities. No, there will be no vampires. After that, I think it will be ready to go through the processes shown on the unfinished progress bars. Uh, those progress bars … Trust me, no one rues their recent stasis more than I do. I’ll be giving them a hefty kick start as soon as humanly possible.

A Cloud in Her Eye

Several people have asked about A Cloud in Her Eye – when it will be available etc. It’s definitely going to be released, but only after a bit of adapting, and that probably won’t happen before book 2 of The Wakening is out.

By design, Cloud is about as far from the Wakening as I could stretch. Here’s why. When you write a fantasy adventure, there is much to compel the reader. It’s like using coloured pencils instead of just charcoal. The colours – danger, mystery, suspense, characters that are larger than life, and of course the fantastical aspects – all help to make things interesting. But if you take those out, you get to see how good the basic shapes of the story are.

I wanted to get better at making a narrative hold together with normal people and their interactions. I think the temptation is to use coloured pencils to rescue shapes that aren’t quite right. If you can rather get those charcoal lines right, the coloured-pencil elements actually become more compelling, seeing as they attach to more believable forms.

It might sound as if Cloud is something baked with sawdust and water, but it’s not really like that. I’ve found that the best ingredients for a good story are the people and their interactions. Simplifying can actually make for a more interesting read. (Fear not – I won’t be distilling The Wakening to minimal elements. The fantasy aspects will actually grow as the story progresses.)

Cloud is a special book to me. I’ve grown really fond of the characters; and the setting – Ireland – is still firmly lodged in my heart. Even if real-life stories aren’t your thing, Cloud should give a glimpse of a truly beautiful country that – and now I’m going to partly contradict myself – is almost like a real-world fantasy island. 

Book 4

It’s starting to appear more likely that there will be a book 4. Either that or a really long book 3. The ideas for a fourth volume have begun to flow and I’m getting pretty excited about the natural arc it would allow the story to take. Sometimes a series can be a collection of related tales, sometimes one continuous tale. I’m writing The Wakening to be more or less continuous (with a few small branches developing as it goes), so I won’t add a book 4 unless the story calls for it. I’ll keep you in the loop as we progress with the tale.

Looking ahead

The house I’m modifying, unfortunately decided to more or less collapse when we started the renovations. Pretty much everything had to be redone. Let’s just say it was a magnificently timed sale. You could also say I was given a great opportunity to witness everything that goes into – and goes wrong when – building a house. I would have been a great deal happier with my ignorance and all the time that has been eaten up. What started out as a ten-week commitment has grown to eight months. I’ve wanted to quietly explode numerous times a day. Unfortunately, once you embark on big renovations, you have no choice but to finish. There’s no pulling out and selling after you start knocking down walls. It really does feel like a kind of prison. I’ve been thinking of it like whitewater rafting. After entering that first rapid at the top of the canyon, you’re in it until the end. Your options are finishing the rapid, or death. So I’m paddling with everything in me.

This is mostly an owner build, so I have to work site during the day and sort through the vast details of building admin at night. The hours are crazy. Just writing this blog post has taken well over a month, with time borrowed here and there. I had absolutely no idea it would be like this. If I had known before … The experience has, however, given me the inspiration for a profound new work of non-fiction. It’s going to be titled Advice on Building or Remodelling your House. I’m still putting the final touches to the manuscript, but at this point it reads as follows: Don’t.

Please feel free to comment on the text or even offer contributions for inclusion. I’d particularly appreciate hearing from anyone who has gone through the process.

I estimate, if all goes well, that I’m into the final six weeks of the building ordeal. I’m looking forward to the end like Christmas – I’m sure anyone who has ever built can relate. On that day, with writing tools honed and a mini-library ready to be put to work, I suspect I’ll be clocking some monstrous hours without noticing it. After all, I have a story to tell – a story I’m willing, wanting, waiting to tell you.

 

As a child, I never had any trouble dreaming. The ideas I dreamed up, often during the excellent opportunities afforded by afternoon maths classes, had a way of growing to alarming proportions and becoming projects that allowed me little sleep. Since then, I’ve almost always been working on one large project or another. But something I noticed about the trajectories from dreams to projects is that there was never any real division between the two stages. The idea generator could never be turned off and actually seemed to increase its output as the results of building led to new inspiration. I think most idea-driven people are like this because the objective is not to finish the job, but to make something special.

I wouldn’t be altogether surprised if the inventor of the wheel began by drawing and then building a square block as a kind of support, but then realized he could move it around more easily if he knocked off the four corners and gave it an axle, and then realized he could knock off the next eight corners … until he had the first wheel and beginnings of the first racing cart.

Writing is like this for me. As the book takes shape, I begin to understand what it wants to be. Corners get knocked off, spokes are added, and I realize the original idea described the starting point more than the final product. There were times I didn’t have this luxury and had to race for immovable deadlines. The results weren’t necessarily bad, there was seldom anything special or magical about them either. I find that creativity only really breathes when given space. If, however, the breathing starts to sound like snoring, we have a different kind of problem.

I have a number of music albums that I can listen to over and over, and then I have a few by the same artists that I can’t. Usually, when I go back and dissect the production, it becomes apparent that the ones that keep growing on me are the ones that were made with far greater labour. Occasionally one finds exceptions to this, but those exceptions are normally mysteries to artist and audience alike.

The writing of book 2 has been a very different experience to the one I imagined. At more than 40% longer than the first book, which was already on the long side, it’s been my biggest creative challenge to date. I know that, as a reader, the length of the process can be trying in a different way, because the progress isn’t visible. So I’d like to take you behind the scenes for a glimpse of what is happening and what to expect. I’ll do my best to keep this free of spoilers.

 

An overview of the writing log

I wrote the rough draft at speed in about four months, but it was very rough. I didn’t stop to research or embellish anything, so if there was a passage that had to do with nautical terminology, my text would read something along the lines of, “The captain bellowed for the men to [adjust the thingummy and get the ship to do whatever ships are meant to do in these conditions]”. I have a smattering of sailing knowledge, but that’s from single-masted hobie cats, not these tall ships that are all flapping canvas and knotted spiderwebs. The same omissions applied to the specifics of cooking, language, culture, architecture, and many other fields which would spill parts of the story if named. It wasn’t just technical detail I put aside. I also skipped over sections that I didn’t feel ready to write, that weren’t dripping off fingers onto keys. The first draft held the core of the story, but it wasn’t readable, not even to me.

So when it came to the first rewrite, most of my attention went into plugging the holes and completing tricky parts of the narrative. Following this, I took a deep breath and approached the research mountain that glared down with a cruel smile. This stage took easily twice as long as either of the preceding two. Some of the research I handed over to members of the team, without whom I could never have borne the load. To be frank, this was a fairly tough and not entirely exhilarating process. I don’t mind research, but digging for obscure details under pressure is not great fun.

Many will know that infusing research into a novel is nothing like presenting it for a report. It requires far more digging. You could, of course, try something report-like by bending the story around the first mounds of information you discover, but that generally comes across as data dumping. You could also avoid details by using summary-style dodges – “The storm was terrible, but using remarkable skill, the captain held his crew together and they eventually managed to negotiate all the dangers of the waves and rocks.” It doesn’t burden the reader, but neither does it allow the reader to stand on the deck and share in the world of sailors. I find it pays to dig and dig until you find the information that feels right, that feels like it belongs. Detail is always more convincing than the absence of detail, but a few of the right details are more engaging than heaps of digressive ones. It’s ironic that it can take more research to present less information, but in the end, it takes the laboriousness from the reader’s shoulders and puts it on the author’s – where it belongs.

Another aspect to the research is that, when writing fantasy, you don’t want details to hearken too strongly back to any particular culture in our world if you can help it. I’ll use an example from the first book. When researching sword-making, there was a wealth of information on Japanese techniques. It was easy to find and there was more than enough for my purposes. But I realized that if I drew from only this, it would ring too many bells and people would be reading “Samurai” instead of “grey marshal”, ejecting them from the fantasy world being created in their minds. I felt the only way to get past this was to collect information from a range of cultures across the world. I churned it all together so that it was, in effect, cultureless, and then drew out what seemed to fit with the Castath people and their level of technology. I’ve tried to do the same thing in the second book. I think this makes for a more convincing sense of an unknown culture, which very strongly impacts a reader’s sense of place, of being somewhere new that still seems real. Once the narrative was tied together and the details worked in, it was time for the first edit.

With the second rewrite done, I was feeling quite spent. Usually, I don’t let anyone read the manuscript at this stage, but I needed help. It came in the form of a developmental or big-picture edit. I’ve always shied away from this kind of thing because outside comments on an incomplete process can bring more confusion than clarity. When a project is in a rough state, people tend to misunderstand, and their feedback conflicts with the objective which can be difficult to express. For an outsider to be able to see not just what it is but what it wants to be and how to get it there is like looking at a wriggling white larva and being able to say, “Honey bee!” or “Harvester ant!”, and hopefully not “Dung beetle!”

A good friend, who has been the team’s PR manager for some time, took on the task, and I don’t think I’ve ever had such helpful feedback on any project. It was the rope thrown down to haul me out from a creative mine shaft. That edit gave me the perspective I’d lost over the past few months. What followed was no small revision. It wasn’t about sandpapering rough edges but rather bashing corners from a large wheel that wasn’t turning properly. Many parts of the book went through a radical transformation, while others were simply removed and replace with better ones. The resulting book is something that finally rolls along without jarring. For the first time, I’m looking at it and thinking, “Yes, that’s what it was meant to be!”

 

The process from here

Another member of the team has started working through the manuscript, highlighting and commenting on anything that needs attention. These comments will be added to a list I’m currently working through – corrections and ideas built up during the past few months. (All of this falls under the developmental edit, so you can see why the progress bar is not zooming across the page. 5% actually represents a pretty significant amount of labour). Many of the items on the list are sparks of inspiration. They arrive at odd and often inconvenient times for note-making, like when I’m trying to sleep, on the dance floor, hanging from a climbing wall or in a cinema. Many people have commented on the randomness of inspiration. When it alights like a drifting leaf, you can brush it off, but you won’t likely find it again. I make sure I snatch and record all those little ideas when they flit by. Digital notes work well, but there’s something about the immediacy to scratching thoughts on paper. There is one tiny note book that works well for me on hikes. It’s slightly bigger than a credit card, very thin, and holds about 60 pages. It was actually the inspiration behind Kalry’s walkabout diary – something small and light enough to hang around my neck.

Once I’ve finished with the current list of notes, I’ll use the compare document feature to check all the additions, and changes to the manuscript that appeared in the last stage, improving the flow and fixing the typos. Then I’ll do one more deep-level rewrite. Much of what I look for is explained here. A little over ninety chapters later, the alpha readers will hear the call to action. I’ll go through the manuscript again while they are busy. Once their feedback is incorporated, the beta readers will step forward and I’ll do another revision as they read. Graphics, sketches, print setup and so on will be happening in the background. Once the beta’s feedback has been worked in, it’s over to the final editor, the final corrections, print setup, audiobook recording, and the stores.

 

Expectations and timeline

Readers and authors basically want the same thing – a good book as soon as possible. A few people have suggested that I split this sequel into two, or even three, in order to reduce the waiting time. I could actually earn more that way because nobody minds paying 3 x $4.99 but we all deliberate when presented with any ebook over $10. However, when I consider breaking this book into parts, it just doesn’t feel right for the series. Something of The Wakening’s identity would be lost.

I’d originally hoped to have the book out by the end of 2017, which would have been just under a 2-year write given that book1 expansions and self-publishing demands ate several months after the debut’s release. But that date was estimated when book2 was around 650 pages. When it grew by 50% to 980 pages, any thought of completing it by that time faded. I’ve learned my lesson and I’m not going to suggest another date until all variables are dealt with – nobody appreciates it when expectations aren’t met. When I look back and look forward, I can see that most of the hard yards are done, but there is still a healthy distance remaining. It is, however, the stage of the process when everything starts fitting together and the pace begins to pick up.

I’m working as fast as I can – attested by the typing cramps in both hands – but also as conscientiously as I can. I’m just reaching that energising stage where the overall form has begun to emerge and it inspires me afresh to make sure this this book is allowed to develop into all it wants to be. (And don’t anyone dare say, “Dung beetle!”)