Friday, July 19, 2019

It's DONE

After nearly a whole year of writing, I'm overjoyed to announce that the first draft of STAND is finished. As you can see from the word count chart above (I do this for all of my books), there were ups and downs in the writing process, and at times weeks or even months would go by with little progress. But since February of this year, I was able to finally lock into a sustainable pace, and continued that pace up till now.

There is nothing like the feeling of completing a first draft. It's an exhilarating mix of accomplishment, excitement, and relief: accomplishment at having finished such a formidable project, excitement at the prospect of being able to share it soon with the world, and relief for not  giving up mid-way!

And now comes the fun part–editing! It may sound strange to say that this is my favorite part, but it truly is. When I'm writing the first draft, I resist the urge to go back and read previous sections of the story. In fact, except for going back to double-check facts, I try not to look at what I've written at all. This can be a hard urge to resist, but I feel it's important to keep the writing momentum going. Editing the first draft is for me an opportunity to read the completed story for the first time–I can actually enjoy the book as a new reader would. And because, at this point, so much of the writing was done months prior, I've forgotten much of it myself. This helps me judge the beats of the story objectively; if certain character arcs aren't working or if the dialogue is clunky, this is where I'll often catch it.

Once my editing work is done, the book is formatted and sent out to my small team of editors and proofreaders. They are invaluable in catching errors, inconsistencies, and typos that I missed. Many readers have written in asking why All Things New and The Unrighteous don't feel as polished as the later books, and a lack of editors is the reason. With those first two books it was just me doing everything, but with later books I've always relied on outside sets of eyes to help proofread, and it really shows.

As I've said previously, the book will be released sometime next month, in August. So please stay tuned and enjoy your regional conventions!

6 comments:

  1. Thank you for the update! I am sure I can speak for many when saying, I can't wait to read it! I guess I must wait anyway. Come on August!

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  2. Thank you brother Jonathan for making the convention season more interesting.

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  3. Im so excited. I thought if you while doing the bible reading talking about speculations and genealogies. I consider speculations about the new world that motivate me to keep my eye on the prize and see the kingdom as a matter if 'when' not 'if' a good version of speculation.

    So im thrilled to check back in to discover the wait is almost over!

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    1. I had actually considered making a post about this–reading over the material (the original verses along with the supplementary research), it got me to thinking about my goals with these books. I think it's always good to review from time to time my outlook and make sure that I'm not fostering debates or being dogmatic. (While the context is clearly related to false religious teaching, I imagine that anything that could cause division would fall in a similar vein.) This is why it's so important to always remind readers that what I write is fiction, and that the goal is to encourage the reader to use his or her own imagination to envision future events.

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  4. Congrats on finishing the first draft, way to go. I can’t wait to read the final book!

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