Storytellersunplugged

So.

Confession time.

I…am not a “real writer”.

Oh, sure, I’ve written. I’ve published literary criticism, book reviews, RPGs, video games, humor, and six months’ worth of columns in a Korean-language video game magazine. I’ve done short fiction, tie-in novels, and a chapter in a book on game writing that was enough to get me branded an enemy of Art by one blogger who took particular exception to the pragmatic approach I was espousing.

But until now, I had never been through The Process. Yes, the magical, mystical, shrouded-in-layers-of-haze-like-the-Eleusinian-Rites- as-recast-by-the-writers-of-Dr.-Strange process of publishing a novel, at least from the author’s side. Yes, there were those four tie-ins, but a subtle program of researching The Process (Sample approach: “Hey, Jim, what’s it like publishing a novel, huh?”) gave me the rough outlines, nay, the parameters. Mystic terms like “ARC” and “galley” – which, contrary to my belief, is not where they chain writers who miss deadlines to oars and make them row book publicists around the Tyrrhenian – slowly became part of my vocabulary, and I learned enough to at least pretend to know what I was talking about.

But until now, I had never, in the words of Eric Idle, you know, done it.

As of this point, however, I have. With my first original novel, Firefly Rain, coming out in January, I have begun to experience all of the steps it takes to turn a Word file into a novel. And let me tell you, I had no idea what I was in for. It has been educational, interesting, and at times, terrifying. Above all, however, it has been a process, a ritual of completion that marks the transformation of an idea into an honest-to-God book.

And now, thanks to my editor at Wizards of the Coast Discoveries, the talented and infinitely patient Susan Morris, I’m going to take you with me through one of those ritual steps – just one – in this case, the reading of the galley proofs. Think of it as a public service, so that you, too, gentle reader, can know what you might someday be in for – or can laugh at what you’ve already been through.

And so, without further ado, the Blogging of the Galleys, as it was, or is, or might have been:

***

6:30 PM – The doorbell rings. Roughly eight and a half seconds pass between the last sound dying away and my sweeping the door open, and in that time the UPS deliveryperson has dropped a package on my doorstep, pelted down the walk, and driven as far as Charlotte. In other words, they are nowhere to be seen. On the step, a large box. Correction – as I pick it up, it’s a large and heavy box. Ominous thumping sounds come from inside as its weight shifts.

6:38 – The box is finally inside. The shipping label tells me it’s from Susan, so I ask my wife to get me a knife from the kitchen so I can open it. She responds that she’s not letting me have a knife when I’m doing anything involving my writing. Score one for the wife.

6:45 – A pile of paper the approximate size and shape of a Quonset hut slides out of the box and onto the air hockey table. Yes, we have an air hockey table. No, I don’t think it’s stable enough to support the weight of the proofs for long. I scoop them up and hurry upstairs to my office.

6:47 – Stop at top of stairs. Catch breath. Remember to note this for posterity, realize that posterity is going to think I’m a goober, keep going.

6:48 – Realize I forgot to strike the stuff about the stairs from the record. Say a mental “screw it” and throw the pile down on my desk. The desk makes a noise like a lovesick moose in protest. I very rapidly clear four months’ worth of bills, two empty Jones Soda cans, and a pile of Stan Ridgway CDs off the remainder of the desktop to make room and reduce the load.

7:04 – Melinda pokes her head into my office and asks what my plans are for the evening. She sees me instead poking at the proofs with a stick, making sure they are not going to attack me even if provoked. “You are very silly,” she says, shuts the door, and goes back downstairs, where she and our summer houseguest, her nephew, can engage in some heated bonding over the “Face-Melters” level of Guitar Hero II.

7:05 – I stare at the galleys. Right. Going to get started any second now. Going to go through this sucker line by line and nail it.

7:10 – Still staring.

7:15 – Still staring. I think it’s staring back. Cripes, it didn’t seem that long when I wrote it.

7:30 – I’ve won two games of Freecell, lost six, and downloaded a significant portion of the Drive-By Truckers’ back catalog on iTunes, on the premise that it’s good music to get me in the mood of the novel. The Freecell games, I have no excuse for.

7:45 – Page one. It’s a good start.

7:50 – I’m through the prologue and the first chapter, which had taken the brunt of a lot of the rewrites and debate. It reads well. I mark one sentence for a change and move on.

7:56 – First embarrassing spelling mistake of the evening! I howl my anguish at the uncaring stars, then write it down and move on.

7:57 – Second embarrassing mistake of the evening.

7:58 – Third embarrassing spelling mistake. I resolve not to mention spelling mistakes in the blog any more.

8:06 – Up to chapter four. Downstairs, they’re doing co-op on Rush’s “YYZ”. I turn up the Truckers.

8:14 – We reach the landmark “first howlingly bad Bible error” of the night. It’s actually just a juxtaposition of two names, no doubt caused by doing revisions far too late at night in a Montreal hotel room, but even so, letting this one get through would be Bad, with a capital “Suck”. Gingerly, I note it.

8:17 – No bolt of lightning has struck me down. I continue editing.

8:21 – It’s quiet downstairs. Too quiet. Why are they not distracting me, damnit?

8:35 – Through chapter six. As a reward, I take myself downstairs to get a can of soda, then lurch back up to my cave like a morlock on a booty call lest the dreaded Guitar Hero riffage tempt me to abandon my labors.

8:47 – I knock over the can of soda. A rivulet of bubbling brown fluid lurches toward the “unread” pile. I swipe it away, and build a temporary retaining wall out of old Spanish-language promotional bookmarks for Vampire: The Dark Ages. They’re laminated, they can take it.

8:56 – Crisis averted, desk dried, soda removed to a safe distance.

9:03 – I get back to that ‘proofing’ stuff I’m supposed to be doing. Chapter seven, and I find myself reading, as opposed to casting a gimlet eye on my still-inchoate prose. On one hand, that’s a good thing. I mean, if I can get caught up in it after spending more months than I want to think about living in the novel’s headspace, that tells me that it’s a pretty good story. On the other hand, it’s not helping me do what I have to do. I backtrack fifteen pages and go over them again.

9:16 – A hundred pages in and no sex scene yet? Who wrote this thing?

9:23 – The hero drinks a beer. He does that a lot, I’ve noticed. I clamp down firmly on the urge to go downstairs and emulate him, on the grounds that it probably won’t help my proofreading much, if at all. Also, I’ve got better beer in my fridge than the character’s got in his, and I don’t want him getting jealous.

9:40 – Melinda, the aforementioned and incredibly patient wife, sticks her head in my office. “Are you done yet?” My answer sounds like a sasquatch with his paw in a blender. She shuts the door again.

9:57 – Page 150. So far, so good, but I’m suffering grad school flashbacks. The last time I read something this closely, I was living in Boston, forty pounds lighter, and still inclined to do amateur theater.

9:59 – Amateur theater flashbacks. They will pass, they will pass.

10:04 – Hey! There’s acrobats in the book. Big ones. I didn’t write in any acrobats! Where did the acrobats come from?

10:08 – Suddenly realize that somehow writing assignments from one of Melinda’s writing classes have gotten mixed in with the manuscript. For ten minutes, I have been assiduously providing notes on someone’s senior thesis. The scary part is that the paper isn’t even the same size. Clearly, the focus can be relaxed a little bit. Just a smidge.

10:10 – Notes file is officially clean of any comments about acrobats.

10:14 – Get idea for short story idea about acrobats. Start writing it down.

10:16 – Fling pencil across room, accidentally terrifying one of the cats. No notes about other stories allowed until I’m done with this one, damnit.

10:24 – Six other story ideas have made themselves known in the last eight minutes. Bastards!

10:30 – Page 200. Either I’m picking up speed, the novel’s getting better, or I accidentally grabbed that beer after all.

10:36 – Find some new typos. Me and my big mouth. Err, blog. Err, blouth. Whatever.

10:42 – I check the clock. Nearly three hours in. My neck and back feel like Lionel Hampton’s been using them for practice. My sympathy for authors of Jordanesque fantasy dagwoods goes up several notches.

11:04 – Melinda again. “Are you done yet?” “Grrr.” “Are you coming to bed?” “Grrrrr.” “Do you want me to help?” “Grrr…oh God, yes, yes, a thousand times yes! I mean, err, Grrr!”

11:22 – Past the 275 page mark and picking up steam. I think my characters want to get rid of me. They’re afraid of more edits.

11:34 – 300! Woohoo! This part of the novel will now defend Thermopylae against the Persian hordes!

11:37 – Read last comment. Sigh. Go downstairs for more caffeine. Inhale it. Get more. Carry it back upstairs. Place it carefully away from remaining 75 or so pages.

11:39 – Inhale additional caffeine. Wonder where helping verbs and articles have gone in my blogging.

11:44 – So far, I have come across spelling mistakes, a mislabeled character, one embarrassing factual error, one situation that, if left unchecked, would pit the content of my novel against the laws of physics, and evidence of a marked disdain on the author’s part for consistency in italicization. Which is to say, so far, so good. I have a brief urge to look at the draft of the manuscript I submitted, just for the sake of comparison, then ruthlessly squish the notion. I’m fairly certain that if I try it, I’ll be turned into a pillar of salt. Even if I’m not, I’m already engaged in spending the evening hunting for my own mistakes. I’m reasonably certain I don’t want to find the countless hordes that were there in the earlier, pre-editing, Neanderthal phase of composition.

11: 48 – Getting there. Time to knuckle down. Also time to correct my sudden, intense semicolon addiction.

11:52 – I stash some of the semicolons for later. I can quit using them any time I want, you know. I just like complex syntax.

11:59 – Page 350. It’s the height of the action. Things are exploding, explanations are being explained, dogs and cats are living together [editor’s note – Not really. The cats are reserved for the short fiction.] I find myself feeling a little twinge that it’s going to be over soon. This, I think, is also a good sign.

12:14 – Last chapter, excuse the prologue. One more typo, one more doubled space between words. Things are winding down, and so am I.

12:27 – Melinda again. She knocks, then asks how it’s going. “Done,” I say,” looking at the list of edits onscreen. I save the file and reverently tuck the pile into the corner of the desk. She looks at me, looks at the proto-book, looks at the serried ranks of empty Coke Zero cans lined up on my desk. “You’re going to do it again tomorrow, right?” I nod. “Right.”