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19/5/2024 2 Comments The only way to learn how to write is to write – seven lessons I’ve learned writing six novels. Back in October 2021, I started writing. The story that had been rattling around my head for the best part of ten years, finally got written. By Christmas 2021, I’d finished my first draft and I launched myself straight into the sequel. By the end of spring, 2022, I’d written three draft novels and was deluded into thinking I could actually write.  I started querying my first novel, I also paid an editor for a review of said novel. When I got my feedback, I realised it stank. I gave up querying and parked my first trilogy and cracked on with the sequel trilogy. By autumn of the same year, I’d drafted another three novels. Wow! In around twelve months, I’d committed over 600,000 words to paper. That’s a lot by anyone’s standards. I find writing first drafts easy; the stories rattle around my head and fight to come out. I’ve never had writer’s block; I’ve never struggled to come up with a plot or to work out a direction of travel for my stories. But that’s half the problem. I’m incredibly impatient. I hate indecision and I have a bias for action in everything I do. I can’t deal with uncertainty and things I can’t control. It’s the main reason I don’t run a property development company anymore. I can’t deal with the stress caused by the uncertainty of the process of selling houses I’ve renovated or built. But this characteristic often leads to poor, rushed decisions. When it comes to writing, I don’t take time to think plots and characters over for a long period of time, I quickly decide how things should go, and start scribbling. In writing, as in life, this doesn’t always lead to the best outcomes. Lesson 1. A rushed novel is (probably) a flawed novel. If you prioritise speed over perfection, you will move too quickly to spot the bits that still need work. So after I’d drafted six novels, then what? Well, I convinced myself I knew what I was doing after all that writing practice. I’d had some positive feedback from the few people who’d read my novels and a few suggestions of tweaks I could make. I decided that was enough to allow me to do my own developmental edits. Lesson 2. Your average alpha reader (an alpha reader is a first draft reader – beta readers tend to read your almost finished novel) is no substitute for a pro. Friends and family may be able to give you some basic feedback, but they won’t give your novel the critical review it needs. Friends and family had given me some nice feedback, but my professional review and my own instincts made me realise that my first three novels needed loads of work, so I decided to focus on the second three which were in a better state. These were the ones I was going to self-publish. They were set twenty years after the first trilogy and had been written to stand alone – think Star Wars episodes IV – VI. I started work on getting my second trilogy publishing ready. I shifted chapters around and re-wrote bits. I read through each of the manuscripts a few times and improved descriptions, made dialogue less clunky, made sure things flowed better and thought I’d fixed everything I needed to fix. I then employed a pro to do a line and copy edit of my novels. For those who aren’t editing experts, line editing looks at decent use of language, readability and flow, while copy editing looks primarily at technical accuracy and decent spelling and grammar. Lesson 3. A line and copy editor will not fix a flawed novel. They will only make sure your English is good, they will not point out massive plot holes or under-developed characters. After I’d done my own developmental edit based on the feedback of un-qualified alpha readers and got my novels edited by a pro, I was convinced my second trilogy was awesome. I employed a pro-cover designer too, and got some pretty covers… Lesson 4. A cover designer will only every work to your brief, don’t expect miracles. I’ll come back to the lesson above shortly. So there I was, with my newly edited novels and shiny covers. I got them whacked online at six-week intervals and rushed them out the door. It kind of sounds like I should have paid attention to lesson 1 here – DON’T RUSH! Because I rushed, I wasn’t able to have the sequel ready for pre-order on day one. I should have waited until they were all ready. Anyway… By summer 2023 I’d published all three books in my second trilogy and then tried a lot of things to sell them. I tried Amazon ads, Facebook ads, I used promo sites, I worked on my author platforms on my website, Amazon and Goodreads, I even employed a marketing agency. I sold a few hundred books; take a look at an earlier blog to see the figures. I sold the equivalent of 450 books, if you include pages read on Kindle Unlimited, but as I followed the stats over time, I noticed something – my readthrough wasn’t great. People who bought book 1, weren’t buying the sequel. On the plus side, a lot of people who bought book 2 did buy book 3, so things were looking good there, so what was the issue with book 1? I had good reviews for book 1. It was averaging 4.3 stars and I had quite a few reviews from people I’d never met independently singing my book’s praises. I was really struggling to work out what was wrong. Then a lovely chap called Peter from Snowdon Publishing Services helped me figure it out. Lesson 5. Your novel is flawed, the question is, how flawed? Even best-sellers have flaws, but little flaws can be overlooked, the best marketing in the world can’t save a heavily flawed novel. It took time for me to conclude the first novel in my second trilogy was full of issues. I’d always had doubts about the first chapter and wondered about other threads besides. Peter flagged up the issues with chapter 1, I was also beginning to doubt the rest of the manuscript too, in part because of the stats on the read-through. So I pulled my whole trilogy off the market and employed Peter’s daughter, Karen, to give my manuscript a review. Lesson 6. Be prepared to start again. One definition of insanity is to keep trying the same things and to expect different results. One of the reasons I’d started my self-publishing journey with my second trilogy, was that it would give me a chance to start again. I could re-launch with my first trilogy, and good god, I’m so very glad I have this opportunity. Karen’s review came back, I gave it a read and it was like the rose-tinted filters I’d viewed my novel with were ripped away. I could see the whole thing so much more clearly now. Every flaw she flagged made complete sense, I agreed with it all. The novel is fixable – it has a good overall concept and some good characters, there’s just bits that aren’t delivered as well as they could be. I’m going to fix that book, but not yet. Right now I’m preparing to launch the first trilogy. I’d re-written my very first novel in the summer of 2023 and tried to query it to literary agents for a time. But soon after I’d made the decision to pull my second trilogy off the market, I decided to self-publish the first trilogy, too. I’ve asked Karen to review book 1 of my very first trilogy. She’s provided some very valuable feedback and I now know what I need to do to it. I’m going to crack on shortly, just as soon as I’ve finished the re-write of my second novel. When I re-read my early work, I realise how bad my writing was back then. The amount I’ve learned from my writing journey to date is immense. Lesson 7. You will get better the more you write. You are a better writer than you were when you wrote your first, first draft. You are not as good as you will be in years to come. I’m getting my covers re-designed too. I said I’d come back to lesson 4 – well, back when I was trying to rush my novels onto the market, I employed a rather expensive American to design my covers thinking that because he was expensive, he’d work miracles. He didn’t. He produced pretty covers but they didn’t link to the story as well as they could have done. When you’re marketing, you’re paying for clicks. If people click on a pretty cover that doesn’t link to your blurb, you’re wasting money. Your covers have to be right, so you need to give a lot of thought into what graphics will sell your story and guide your designer accordingly. After I decided to pull my first trilogy off the market and had received the professional feedback from book 1 in my second trilogy (The General’s Son), I made a metal ‘to-do’ list, it looks a bit like this:
You can see that there’s a lot of work to do here, and if I pay attention to my first lesson, I realise I really shouldn’t rush things. I’m going to take my time getting my novels ready this time. I’m going to make sure they are all pretty much ready to publish before I even release the first book in the series. If I’m focussing on editing, I won’t have time to do marketing. I’m going to plan properly this time, I’m going to have a marketing strategy, I’m going to have polished novels that really are as good as I can get them before I send them out into the world. I’m going to heed my own lessons. It’s going to take time. But as I said in my last blog, few authors have success overnight. Very, very few. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. I’ve started a whole new race but I’m pacing myself this time so that when I get to the end, not only will I have the energy to tell the world what I’ve achieved, I’ll finish with the strength to start another race, but next time, armed with all I’ve learned from the first race, I’ll do even better. To follow me on my journey to publishing, for free, advance copies of my novels and all the latest updates, be sure to sign up to my newsletter!
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