Bringing an old manuscript back to life, and to print.

Please welcome guest blogger, Pete Abela, author of WINGS, as he talks about unfinished drafts, the gift of time, and the importance of quality feedback.

The publication of Wings has been an exciting and proud event for me. I’d nearly go so far as to say it rates in the top handful of achievements in my life so far.  However, Wings almost didn’t get published. It spent close to a year in my drawer as a half-written manuscript: unloved, ignored and forgotten. Today I’ll talk about how it got to that point and the sequence of events that enabled me to turn an incomplete and fault-ridden document into a published novel.

Although Wings is a work of fiction, it is heavily based on the story of two men I admire: my grandfather who was a WWII fighter pilot and my brother who is now a commercial pilot. I thought they had both led amazing lives and so I started writing Wings using the bones of their stories as the basis for the plot. I did not plan the entire book. Wings is the first novel I have attempted so I did not know how to go about it. I simply sat down and started writing.

I continued this process for many months, writing almost every day. I enjoyed the process of writing and seeing the story come to life. I enjoyed it, that is, until I came to a grinding halt. I woke up one day fed up and discouraged. I resented the process of writing and the time it consumed, particularly given I was unsure whether what I had written was any good. I wondered if I was wasting my time. Worst of all, I had no idea of the ending and did not know what to write next.

I decided to take a short break from writing. During my break, I read a book about stock market investing using the Value Investment approach. It got me hooked and I began spending significant amounts of time researching stocks and tracking my shares. Whatever time had been spent writing was taken up with my new interest. Wings faded from my consciousness and was soon forgotten.

It was almost a year later that I chanced upon Wings as I hunted for an elusive file on my PC. Out of curiosity,  I opened it and began reading. I was surprised at the quality of the writing and read the entire manuscript in a day. Wings was much better than I remembered and I was immediately struck by its potential. Even better, an ending popped straight into my mind.

I was seized by a new burst of enthusiasm and finished the first draft of Wings within a month. I spent another month polishing it, then sent it to a publisher and prepared to wait.

I didn’t have to wait long.

“We like it,” replied the publisher within a week. “But it’s not of publishable standard yet. You can pitch it to other publishers if you like, but our recommendation would be to obtain a reader’s report.”

I took their advice and requested a reader’s report, which is a manuscript assessment by an accomplished editor. While I waited, I began writing a second novel. After six weeks, the report came back. It contained general comments about areas of weakness, as well as a specific example of where the weakness could be found in my manuscript. It was up to me to understand the comment and example and work out how to apply the feedback to the remainder of the manuscript.

The two major weaknesses were a lack of revelation of the character’s emotional response to major events and a scarcity of description about setting. They did observe that my natural writing style was lean and uncluttered, so they cautioned me against going too far with my descriptions and emotional responses. There were also some mechanical issues such as an over-reliance on “ly” adverbs and a passive writing style through the use of words such as “had”, “was” and “am”.

The reader’s report was an excellent initiative and assisted me to make the leap from “gifted amateur” to “polished professional.” The suggestions rang true and the fact that they used examples of my own writing to point out the areas for improvement helped me to grasp their suggestion and apply it to the rest of the novel. The fact that a publisher expressed interest in my work provided more than enough incentive for me to continue the process of refinement.

It took me a couple of months to rework the manuscript in accordance with the feedback. Within ten days of submitting Wings to Really Blue Books, I had an offer to publish. I’ve been floating ever since, although working very hard on further edits, establishing a social media platform and planning publicity.

On May 21st, the big day finally arrived. Wings became a published novel and I can now call myself an author.

It’s a great feeling.

Wings can be purchased as an eBook from the publisher,
Really Blue Books
or
on Amazon.

~

Pete is an author from the city of Wollongong, just south of Sydney in the state of New South Wales, Australia. For most of his adult life, Pete has been a left-brained computer scientist whose love of reading eventually led him to take up writing. Having surprised himself and those around him by getting Wings published, he’s now having fun dreaming up marketing strategies and publicity stunts – tasks he never could have envisaged doing ten years ago. He continues to stretch the boundaries of his right hemisphere and is now working to complete a second novel.
His left brain hasn’t been totally neglected through this process. Pete works as an IT Manager in order to help keep his wife and four kids fed and clothed. When he’s not working, reading, writing or enjoying the company of his family, Pete likes to sneak away for a bit of exercise – either tennis, soccer or a laborious run.
You can find more about Pete at his website and blog (http://peteabela.com). The blog contains a number of really bad jokes. You have been warned.
Like Pete on Facebook; follow him on Twitter.

How to Stay Abreast of Your Writing Goals

writing in the journal

The beginning of the year is a great time to set new goals, or cut and paste last year’s goals onto the “new” list. I mean, that’s how it works sometimes, right? We all have good intentions come January 1st, but there are always certain goals that get pushed around but never accomplished. I’m tired of moving the same goal around into list after list, feeling the weight of it push down on my shoulders and smother my muse. So, this year, I have a different plan. I’m still setting goals, but I’m approaching them in a new way.

1. Make sure goals are reasonable and measurable.

Sarah Callender wrote a wonderful post on Write It Sideways about the difference between Dreamers and Goalers, saying writers must be a little of both:

A dream is shiny and pretty and probably quite heavy. Like a coconut cream pie. Or an ocean at sunset. Dreams sit on our shoulder and whisper things like, But what about me? Don’t forget about me! . . . But if you dream of getting published in a prestigious publication, in any publication at all, then create a SMART goal, something over which you have total control.

Writing a novel is my dream. One goal I set in the past to help me reach that dream was to get the draft ready for Beta readers. By March. Okay, June. Um…by the end of the year, dammit. My original goal wasn’t specific enough. Now, I know that I need to break down the idea of finishing the draft into more reasonable, bit-size chunks, like “write the next chapter by the end of the week.”

And speaking of weeks….

2. Use whatever tools you can find to organize weekly goals.

I read about Jane Friedman’s weekly goal sheets long before I started using them, but since I’ve been filling them out, my brain feels more in tune with where my heart wants to go. I love these worksheets for two reasons. First, they are weekly. Period. As Friedman says in her post about the sheets, “If you have to-dos that stretch out further than a week, it can become overwhelming and meaningless.” Overwhelming and meaningless, that’s when I start crying and feel like quitting. The second reason I love these worksheets is because they allow space to write down what might be stopping me from achieving the goals and space to write down long-range goals that I can’t work on in that one week but don’t want to forget. On this, Friedman say, “Writing them down helps free my mental energy, so I can focus on other things.” Be gone, Overwhelming fiend.

So, I have reasonable and measurable goals and a nifty worksheet. Now what?

3. Join a writer’s group. Stat.

Attending a writing group, bi-weekly or monthly, isn’t always an option because of time or money or location. But, when I have the resources, that’s where I go. Those groups make me accountable, push me forward on writing projects, large or small, and feed me with an energy that I can’t ignore. By the time you read this, I will have attended my first Roundtable in too long of a while. All the anxiety of reading out loud and sharing a rough story is worth it if it means this next project, a collection of flash fiction, will move beyond an idea.

Your turn. What’s your secret to staying on top of your goals? Spill it here, because if anything, we will learn from each other.

* Photo credit: redcargurl on Flickr.com

Camp Duty

This weekend I’m hosting, what I like to call, City Camp.

December colors

My niece and nephew are in town, having traveled from a smaller city just north of here to our house, where you can span the back yard in a few long strides and fall asleep under the glow of a billboard light shining in through the bedroom window.

Think four nights of non-stop slumber parties, crowded seating assignments in the back seat of the car, radio station wars; movies back at the house, late-night snacks, and tears at bedtime (just a tiny case of homesickness, happens to the best of us).

Since I’m entertaining a brood of four instead of two, there isn’t much writing going on. But, I am sneaking in some reading, of essays and posts worth sharing:

And, because we’re talking summer camp (even if it is in the city), Allan Sherman comes to mind.

I’m off now, to pass out ice cream bars and to supervise the chaos that may ensue.

* Photo credit: Anders Ljungberg on www.flicker.com