James C Gilliam

*PSA – I figured out how to add the comment section to my posts. Click on the Post Title and read all the way to the bottom. Thanks.*

First, I was fine. Just a slight absence of my day to day. It was, for the most part, only two hours at a time in the evening. By day three, I was going insane. I had a hole in my life that I could no longer fill. I tried cutting off caffiene midday in order to go to bed earlier. I tried reading other stories to no avail. I attempted…desperately attempted to work on Of an Art So Deadly. I really did. Honestly! I even went as far as to…God please forgive me…play…video games. There was no way around it. No means to fight it. It had become a ruling part of my life and I had to accept the path that I had chosen. I am addicted to writing this story.

Truthfully, it was rough for the two weeks that I took a break from The Sword, the Song, and the Mage. I found myself sneaking peaks at my wife’s progress through the draft to see where she was at in the story. After the first week, things began to bubble up. Bits of character lore, stories from the towns, elements from Book 2 beginning to flower which were seen in Book 1. I loved the fact that the more I desired to work on the book directly, and the more I resisted, the more my mind began giving me this hints of things hidden during the first draft. Yes, I believed that it was simply my mind trying to trick me into reading the draft early to begin work on the first revision, but the break from the writing process became very fruitful. I kept a spiral notebook to jot these notes down into as well as the revision notes once I began that stage, and for a fortnight I was without hobby. It sucked, but it was worth it.

I tried to read and take notes initially, but after the first ten pages, I was swept away by the story’s flow. It’s pacing was perfect with the exception of two sections: one in Act 2 and one in Act 3. The second one was an easy fix, as I had one of the hints written down during the rest period and knew exactly what scene to add that directly impacts elements of the story in Books 2 and 3. The other part will take a lot of revision work as the scene was about 25 pages of dialog between two characters. Very chonky! Once I had read through the story in its entirety, I started again. This time, with notebook in hand, I read through and made the notes regarding the missing sensory and emotional elements of each scene that needed to be highlighted. Segments to be added or switched to other scenes/chapters. Even elements from the later novels that needed to be foreshadowed in the story. However illuminating and rewarding this process has been, I was still getting that itch. That hole was still there, and I was still not doing what I had conditioned myself to do for over eight months. So, after finishing my review of Act 1, I started the first revision.

I am currently revising what is now Chapter 3. So, there have been a couple changes from draft to revision. This time around I am working within a formatted template for novels from Kindle Publishing Direct (8.5 x 11in) although I do not plan to publish exclusively via Kindle. More on that topic later. Seeing the title in the big, properly alligned font warmed my heart as much as reading my first draft from my e-ink reader. This was still happening. My subconcious worries were alleviated and while the progress is neither as fast as I want, or as slow as I had planned, there are parts I am taking notes for when I begin working on Book 2 to make the drafting and revision process much smoother. The first is Chapter Breaks. The first draft had none, which may be why my wife has been struggling through it a little bit. The story has awesome pacing, with proper application of time skips, dialog summaries, inferences that keep it going with a natural but still fast tempo. Readers still need those little checkered flags to give them that subconcious reward for their progress and give them a little breather. For the character’s in the story this is life, for the readers this is escapism and entertainment. Also the chapter titles help the reader to want to find out what happens next. It’s the combination of these psycholicial cues that help the reader to get from page to page, chapter to chapter and the reward of ‘what happens next’ that they are conditioned to look for.

Anyway, I have rambled enough and need to get back to scratching that itch. Look for a post here in the next few days regarding one of the YouTube influencers who has helped to keep me on track throughout the process:

Malcom Pryce.

Until then…