Integrity, first.

Writing this post is arrogant. At least, that’s how I feel as my fingers rest on the home row of the keyboard.

I am no great novelist. I may never get there, or even close to it. But I won’t stop trying. It’s that one regret I do not want to face on my death bed. “He was a lousy writer.” But at least I tried.

I’ve been told that what I am about to reveal (as if it’s some great secret) is precisely what readers and other budding authors want to know. They ask: “How many iterations were there before you published? How many drafts? How many edits? Are you a planner or a ‘pantser’? Why does it take so long between books? Where did the idea for your story come from? Why did you choose this genre? Isn’t is just about you? Aren’t you just doing it for the money?”

To answer these and other questions and, hopefully, to inspire those who fear that same death-bed regret, I offer this first post in a series about writing books in The Last Elf series.

You should know that I sort of subscribe to Stephen King’s writing process – the first draft is you telling yourself the story; the second draft is you telling the reader the story. Yes, sometimes I do mix the two. (Mea Culpa, Mr. King. Every writer has his or her own quirks.)

I’ve already told myself the entire story in detailed outlines, storyboards, time lines, character and realm arcs, and countless notes (ranging in length from single phrases to pages of prose and dialogue). In other words, if you somehow could organize the charts, graphs, index cards, Word files, notebooks, and reams of yellowing copy paper into their proper order, you too would know The Last Elf story from word one to the final period. This is what Mr. King might call the first draft – me telling myself the story.

The fact that I did this, I’m told, makes me a ‘planner.’

Also, that makes what I call the ‘first draft’ (on my website and when talking to others) the first draft of the second draft – or, more concisely – the first draft of me telling you the story.

The second draft immediately follows the first. This is a rewrite. I add and subtract bits and pieces, change wording to assuage my inner voice’s rhythm and reasoning, align flawed character behavior, and triple check time lines. I also repeatedly run spell and grammar checks and exhaustively review the consistency of terms, name usage, and titles. Usually, I remove as many of those ‘pungent literary meanderings which bespeak my artistry and mastery of the language’ as my ego allows.

Only when I deem that this draft is the best it can be, do I send it to my editor.

This is the most emotional period in the book’s creation. It’s like giving your first born to a babysitter and leaving for a full year abroad. You place a year’s worth of effort into the hands of someone else and say, “Here’s the best I can do, and you’ll think so too.”

He disagrees. Always. He delineates, in minute detail and without a dollop of mercy, the what, when, where, and why.

Recall the babysitter metaphor above? Imagine you return home to find that the babysitter felt your first born was not all he or she could be, took a meat cleaver, and …

He provides me with these bloody pieces in a Word file, which I open and read.

I spend a day or two complaining and whining, claim his parents were not married and call into question his sanity. Then, I print it out and begin to work on the first rewrite. Caviling over every change, I fix plot holes and character arcs, break long sentences into shorter ones, rearrange illogical flows, add or remove detail, turn dialogue into prose (or vice versa), AND REMOVE COMMAS.

Back to the editor it goes. Afterall, I enjoyed reassembling my baby so much, I must do it a second time.

Now this could go on without end. Write, edit, rewrite. Some fellow writers fall into this deep, black hole of continual improvement. Some never come out. Some emerge with a child ready to face the world.

Is it maturity and a growing confidence in my story telling that enables me to kick the baby bird from the nest to fly away on its own? Maybe. I certainly hope so.

I also hope you do too. Book 3 goes to the editor’s cutting board on March 16.