Lily’s hopefully weekly blog 1!
Blog post Number 1, I suppose!
This is an experiment: I will see if I manage to do regular weekly blog posts on the website from here on out and update you all on what’s happening with my writing, and with my business. Probably there won’t be anything too exciting, but I will also use it as a way to get more familiar with Word Press and managing the website, as well as using it for dictation practise! That’s something I would really like to expand my skills into. I am currently reading the revised edition of Kevin Anderson’s How to Become a Dictator, I believe it’s called. (Editing Lily here: No, I was wrong! It is called On Being a Dictator, by Kevin J. Anderson, Martin L. Shoemaker and Greg Vose. There! Now you know!)
It was in the Novel Writing bundle for this year— currently still ongoing, if anyone is interested! I always find them quite good value. You get a load of books for $20, and even if there’s only one or two that in the end really interest you, that’s still a fairly good price for them. Anyway! I read the original How to become a Dictator quite a while back, a few years ago, and I’m very pleased to see that the revised edition now also speaks about how to go about this when you’re rather more of a pantser than a plotter, as we say.
Because that is me. I am not someone for an outline. If I write an outline, my brain decides that now we know how the story goes and we have no reason to write it anymore. So, I usually head in with only a vague idea of a plan. Some scenes in my head, some images, some dialogue— it depends on the story. But anyway. Kevin Anderson is much more of a plotter than me, but this time around he is… or rather, his co-author is, whose name I’ve currently forgotten— I’ll look it up and add it in later! (You already know from my correction above!) In any case, this revised edition is also speaking to those who won’t be able to print out a detailed outline to take on their hikes and consult while they dictate their stories. And the recommendation for getting into it in the first place is to just start out with notes and other little things like that, to simply get used to the process. So that’s what this is: I am dictating this blog on my walk in the beautiful countryside of Ireland.
I have around me ivy-covered trees and dying bracken, grey sky overhead, willow leaves turning yellow in the hedges. It’s a calm day. Not too cold. Very, very autumn-y. Very suitable for October, or, the end of October. And well, we shall see how this experiment goes, how it continues.
In the meantime, what’s there to say about business things? Likely no one is reading this, so no one will have noticed that at this point in time, we do not actually have any updates happening over on housedraculesti.com. (However, there is still Devan’s reading of the web version of The Rose of Whitby being posted to our Patreon for members weekly!) I need to get back to editing, we need to decide what will be posted next. The original plan for this year, or the second half of this year, was to release the first trilogy in the series- or project, it’s maybe a little more complicated than a series. Maybe more on that later. Well, anyway, the plan was to release The Rose of Whitby in the second-half of this year. But, as it turns out, and was confirmed by feedback from our dear beta reader, the initial instalment, at the very least, drags a lot. It’s fairly old by this point, we weren’t quite as practised in writing, and it did originate in a role-playing group. It’s evolved a lot since then, but that ended up with the first part reading rather like the summary of game events that it is.
So. We needed a new plan. This new plan now involves to do another rewrite of early Rose of Whitby. Rip out probably at least half of the current first part, restructure, get better pacing, better flow, focus on the central narrative and conflict, and overall make it all more streamlined and hopefully a lot more fun to read for anyone who’s interested.
So. Depending on how things go, I have a cautious plan for releasing the Rose of Whitby trilogy next year. That would be 3 books, chunky ones around 100,000 words each, possibly a bit more. Probably around summer or autumn. Meanwhile, I will see where my solo writing takes me. On the other hand, I am looking for a day job currently. So I am unsure at this point how much writing time I will have. Possibly, if this dictation business works out and provides the kind of production boost that it supposedly does, that could really help things a lot, and along and I might, actually, write a book this way. But first. There is a lot of practise involved in a new skill, as always. So we shall see. Well. I think i’ll leave it here for this week. I will have fun figuring out the editing when I get back home. I hope everything recorded alright. I will let you know if it didn’t- or if it did! And we’ll see if this becomes a weekly instalment. Bye for now!
Addendum, now written at the computer: The recording was a success! I tried an automatic transcription through Word’s dictation function, and it’s reasonable, but given how it did require me to go over the whole thing with the recording running for edits, I will have to try out whether it wouldn’t just be faster for me to transcribe the thing myself— I’m a fairly decent typist, after all!
The promise of productivity increase appears to hold true, however. That was almost a thousand words in less than ten minutes! Now if I can translate that into actual fiction rather than rambling into my phone for your entertainment remains to be seen. (Arguably, the goal is still to ramble into my phone for your entertainment, of course.)
Now for posting this affair, and I will see you, possibly, next week!