Holidays and Going Forward

I hope all of you had an enjoyable Christmas and safe travels to boot. Mine went very well. Obviously, writing is thin during the holidays and will continue to be until my New Year hangover wears off.

Going forward, I’m finally accepting some truths about what I need to do. My book, The Corridor, is on hold for now. There are a couple of reasons. One, I’m at the end, and I have no idea how to end it. The ending is very important to me, but it’s been an absolute bugger trying to figure out how to say it. In a lot of ways, it’s very intimidating for me. The second reason, and more important, is that the book is not that strong. I like the story overall. I think it’s an interesting story. But it lacks certain elements that make a book fun to read. One of the hardest things about self-publishing is that there’s no one there to tell you no. Some people really like that. I like it too, but I don’t want to push something out the door simply because I can. Anyone can. I want the reader to be entertained. I don’t want people to read my work and feel that their time was wasted.

The bottom line is that something is missing from The Corridor, something that is keeping it from being a solid story, and that something needs to be identified. My main push has been to complete the story, for fear of never completing anything, but I’ve proven to myself that I can finish a project. So this one get to wait.

The good news is that I now feel free to start working on The Hanging of James Adder. Well, start isn’t accurate since I’ve already written nearly 40k words on its first draft. James Adder is much more sound from a structural point of view, and I feel a lot more comfortable about releasing it as something to sell. I don’t expect it to make me money, but I don’t expect people to be disappointed if they buy it either. So I will move forward with that story and see where the cards fall.

I just want to write well. Heh, “just.” It’s that simple, apparently. I enjoy writing. I enjoy learning about writing and trying to improve. If it’s in my destiny to make money from it, that will happen when it happens. For now, I need to focus on improving my ability as much as possible. I don’t mean to seek perfection before publishing, as that can be an excuse to never publish a word, but I need to be comfortable with the final product.

Cheers