I’m not a big fan of people who claim to be “experts” or “gurus”. I mean, the word “expert” to me mean someone who knows everything about a certain subject. I have no doubt that such people do exist, but the vast majority of the so-called “Experts” only know a very small subset of the equation, and usually use the title as a marketing tool or to shill something.

That’s why you will never hear me say I am an “expert” on anything, not even myself (there are days I wake up wondering just what the hell I was thinking the night before when I drank that pitcher of beer, for example).

No, if you hear me talk about something like I know what I’m doing, it’s most likely because I’ve had personal experience on that subject that worked for me. Does that mean it will work for you? Not necessarily, but maybe. Does that make me an expert?

Hardly.

That’s also the reason you will rarely (if ever) see me talk about sentence structure and grammer and the like. I know enough to be able to write decent prose, but do I know all the rules or every nuance? Absolutely not.

So, why am I coming forth to preach my ignorance?

Well, mainly because I don’t want to lead anyone astray. I prefer full-disclosure to puffed up hype any day.

I’m happy to share my journey and what has and hasn’t worked in the hopes that you might avoid some of my mistakes and build on my successes. Share my own learnings if you will. After all, if you don’t share what you learn why bother learning at all?

Tags: irreverent muse, Michell Plested, overselling yourself, writing

I have learned a lot in my current round of revising my “Mik Murdoch” manuscript.

The very biggest lesson has been not to rush the story. I know I’ve mentioned this, but I sometimes find myself hurrying a story to finish it. It results in glossed over scenes, scenes that end too abruptly or just situations that are unlikely. As you might imagine, I’m getting tagged with more of those at the end of the book than I was at the beginning.

So, I’ve been working for the past several days trying to get to that most sought after page, the last. Except, I keep getting tripped up with little comments like “Expand this” or “Ends too suddenly” or even “Need more here”. What has resulted from these comments is a lot of new writing in the story and very little progress towards “The End”.

I think I’ve added something like 7,000 words in the past few days and I’ve only moved about 12 pages toward the end. That leaves me a little more than 40 pages to go.

At this rate, I’ll add another 21,000 words before I hit “The End”.

I say that with tongue firmly planted in cheek and the story IS much better for all the extra work. I would just very much like to get the story on to the next step.

And now I have a conundrum.

I was trying to get all my edits completed by October 31 so my publisher and editor could take another pass through the book. Since I’m leaving for World Fantasy Convention on October 27th I was kind of hoping to finish by the 26th. That’s today, in case you are keeping track.

With all the new writing, that simply isn’t going to happen. I’m also skeptical that I’ll get a lot of editing done while I’m in San Diego (although it could happen), so October 31 is in jeopardy.

Why October 31?

Two reasons, actually. November 1st is the beginning of NaNoWriMo and I wanted to get writing my next masterwork (no ego at all, right?) AND I told Lorina, my publisher that I was aiming to finish by October 31 so she could move it along.

Well, I’m almost convinced that I will be revising into November. That will delay my NaNoNovel for a week or so but it is still doable. I may be a couple days late getting the revised manuscript to Lorina, but, and this is key, I don’t want to rush it.

If I did, it would put me right back to what got me into trouble in the first place.

So, the lesson here for me is, any time I feel tired and want to rush a scene, step away. Come back fresh and give the scene everything it needs and deserves. It will save me hours of frustration and revision.

Tags: 5 rivers, boy superhero, editing lorina stephens, five rivers publishing, irreverent muse, Michell Plested, mik murdoch, mik murdoch boy superhero, mike plested, mistakes, revising, revision, writing