Unlikely Objects

We tell stories.

Colin Lewis

Chapter Two review: Wednesday

This is a review of Chapter Two from Wednesday the Raven.
See the project page for more information.

Digressions & excursions

When reading this chapter I remember how Harold is prone to the same digressions as I am. I’m sure they will start showing up more in this story. When I digress in writing, I call it “excursions.” Excursions. This, I feel, has a positive ring, and since a reader is always in control of the journey’s speed I don’t feel so bad.

When I digress in oral stories, I usually just have to apologize and shrug.

A growth paradox

I read somewhere on Twitter (sorry, forgotten author of interesting tweet) about a strange potential risk that comes with writing experience. As you better your craft (said the forgotten author), the risk of feeling horrified by your earlier work rises parallel to any extra satisfaction you may receive from improving your craft. Or something like that.

Congratulations! You’ve eliminated twenty-seven of the stock phrases you used to prop yourself up with, but look at this early stuff!

How awkward. And while I’m a little bit fascinated by this idea—frankly, it’s not for me. Why harbour regrets over the impossible? The glass is half full.

That said, before I can call this project complete I believe I’ll need to firm up more than a few sentences. The past me loves repetition and wordiness more than the present me. That’s the main to do item:

To do list

  • Eliminate wordiness, verbosity, pleonastic writing…you get the idea.

Chapter One review: Wednesday

This is a review of Chapter One from Wednesday the Raven.
See the project page for more information.

Have you heard that first chapters make difficult beasts? I had, and this one was. On the other hand, I found the first chapter of my second book (in progress) dead easy to write. Either I was misguided the first time round, or else a little experience goes a long way—or maybe I’ve forgotten the writing problems I used to believe I had.

For those keeping score at home:

  • First chapter, first book = difficult.
  • First chapter, second book = easy.

I wrote this story when I lived in Portugal. Each day I walked to the library in the park with the ruins and the peacocks and sat opposite the painting of Pessoa and wrote. If the weather was warm, I sat on the stone bench above the stepped hillside, the one with the long view out to the ocean. I probably wrote this chapter in both these places and all kinds of weather, because it didn’t work for the longest time.

One remnant of this rewriting is Ming Zhao’s indeterminate age, a typical example of the author smudging the facts to avoid responsibility. I remember originally picturing him as an older person before deciding he should be a child. Considering the amount of exposition I know he gets, I should remedy this (and remember not to smudge so much in the future).

As I recall, the plot actually started somewhere else before I tore it out and rebuilt it. Later I shifted everything forward again, shifted gears and sped things up. If I rewrote this for the umpteenth time, I would probably increase the lazy pace again, although I’m not sure I could without writing a different book.

And then a reader writes:

I enjoyed seeing the opening scenes of this chapter untangle themselves from a dense thicket of ideas into a lovely opening passage. The first chapter really sets the tone and pace and is where the reader is welcomed to the book. It has to contain elements of introduction along with hints of what will be experienced later in the text.

I don’t think the pacing in this story will ever be anything less than a challenge for me.

To do list

  • Firm up Zhao’s age
  • Change the pace?
  • Edit Harold’s dialogue after considering Chapter Two

How (not) to write a children’s book

These things happened: I wrote a manuscript, toyed with the possibility of publishing, waltzed a short round with literary agents, grew rapidly disenchanted, and put the entire project on hold—waiting, I thought, until a different and better opportunity might present itself.

This is the opportunity. It’s an experiment.

Screenshot of the Wednesday the Raven site

The plot and the conflict

The story I wrote is a middle grade children’s novel called Wednesday the Raven. It’s about birds and cakes and poetry, finding things that are lost and the long journeys we take that may or may not lead us home. People seem to like it.

One could believe that writing a manuscript is the biggest challenge when creating a book. One would be wrong. Compared with the murky business that follows, writing the words is the easy part. It’s after writing The End that things get tricky.

The publishing world, for all its charms, can be a strange, uncomfortable place for a new author of fiction. You need to negotiate the dos and don’ts of query letters, seduce agents and pigeonhole your audience. You need to close your eyes and sign over your rights, sign on to deadlines and forget basic economic sense. You need to wait months, or maybe years before your story sees daylight. All in all, it adds up to a rough ride for us tender creative types.

The alternative is self-publishing, the world of hacks and charlatans, headstrong visionaries, and a growing group of quietly successful heroes. Self-publishing lacks the built-in editors and prestige of publishing houses but shines brightly with independence and more realistic financial reward. It is a flexible, unregulated, wild and wooly DIY world. One could argue it is the most obvious and attractive choice for a new author and a first novel.

This is where the experiment begins.

I’ve created a project in which I serialize the completion of my story Wednesday the Raven. What does this mean? I’m editing a book in public. The current manuscript clocks in at thirty chapters, and for thirty-odd weeks I’ll publish and review a chapter per week. I’ll post the reviews on the book’s project page and post the chapters in a public Github repository—a version control system that tracks all draft revisions. Readers are invited and encouraged to suggest changes as I chronicle the technical, functional, and emotional details of the work, and in the end, we’ll have a book—ebook and (if the world wants it) print. The big dream.

The backstory

I previously followed the traditional publishing route with this manuscript:

  1. Write queries.
  2. Mail queries.
  3. Wait for lightning to strike.

I compiled a list of agents and began at the top, intending to spend the next several months working my way down to the slushy bottom. I expected little from my first short round of emails, and to my surprise received requests for the complete manuscript. It felt suspiciously easy. I shivered with delight and sent replies. I waited. I waited some more. And gradually, one by one, the agents answered: they liked the story, they said, and they didn’t know how to sell it.

This is where I paused and stepped back.

Until this point I had viewed the story as writer and reader. Viewing it as a marketer meant something else. Does it wear the marks of a blockbuster? Does it fit this or that niche? If the peg doesn’t fit, can we pound it into place? The promise of sales can weigh heavy on art. I wasn’t sure this novel or its author would function well under the pressure.

I had received good feedback from my test readers, but maybe they had missed something. Or maybe I had. I knew the novel wasn’t perfect, but maybe the agents knew something they wouldn’t tell me. Or maybe I didn’t want to know. The whole exercise left me feeling disagreeable and certain I had chosen the wrong path for the book. For now, I thought, to hell with this system. Let’s embrace independence.

Maybe an imperfect first novel makes a perfect vehicle for experimentation. It’s one of many reasons to release this way (some of which contradict each other), but the bottom line is this: a writer wants to find and engage readers and to be read. By working openly and transparently, authors have a special chance to build and connect directly with a community of like-minded readers and reach that goal.

How will this work?

The book is free to read online as it grows and develops—the book site will show the latest version where I post the weekly chapters. Readers can read the chapter reviews here (they’re also listed on the project page), subscribe to updates, and those who want to be more involved can track and suggest changes at the Github repository. Everyone is invited to participate. Results, of course, are not guaranteed—this is still an experiment. There is also the risk of reward, and unexpected success in common hours, and…I’m not sure. Who knows? Let’s decide it’s something good.

Maybe I’m beginning to sympathize with those agents. I like this novel too, but selling it is another story.

Projects