Hello, it’s good to see you.
Welcome to my blog. Here I’ll share my writing experiences and lessons learned in the hope that they might be helpful to someone. I’ll also provide updates on my books and events. - Jim
The Retrokid Now Available
I appreciate your patience! The Retrokid is now available from Amazon! The last month has been hectic as I finalized my first book. As noted, there was some cleanup I had to attend to, and then there were all the packaging and publishing steps. It’s rather straightforward now that I look at it all, but the initial list of tasks and steps was overwhelming. There didn’t seem to be any straightforward questions that I could answer without researching or seeking advice....
The Benefits—and Torture—of Going Back
An old, unpublished book on a hard drive would benefit from a relook before release. This is where I find myself with the first Retrokid… it was started in 2020 and finished a year later. What have I learned since then? Both skill-wise and about the universe and its characters? Can I trust myself to responsibly edit and revise without going overboard? I could have surgically targeted my edits if I knew my way around the book....
The Importance of Versioning and Backups
In prior posts, I’ve mentioned my versioning system, but I want to explore the topic a little more today. If I can save one person from the misery of losing their hard work, then I will have done my job. However, I’m not going to jump into that right away. Instead, I’ll share some of my background, and you’ll see why it’s pertinent. I’ve been making websites or writing code for my most of my life....
Grammar Tools and Humility
Last time we talked, I was just finishing draft 4.0. That’s the last draft with no grammar checking. With 4.0 done (woohoo!), I can dive into what may be my least favorite part of writing a book… a computer telling me how bad my English is. It’s time consuming, tedious, and torturous. To call it a necessary evil may be correct, but it’s not exactly how I feel about this step....
Deeper Dive into Fourth Drafts
In my last post, I discussed how I feel about fourth drafts but only briefly described how I approach them. Today, I’ll go a bit more into detail. With the second and third drafts, I usually have a revision plan that consists of to-dos, fixes, and notes. The fourth draft shouldn’t have any except for some themes or tones that I want to track. That means I jump directly into reading and editing, as explained in the previous post....