I’ve never had this happen before. Persistently working along, and suddenly realizing there’s nothing left on the to-do list. Done? How? Wha? When? Now? OK. The eighth draft of the sequel to Firewatcher is done. That’s the story part, from In The Beginning to Fini. And already, a new to-do list grows. Sometime between now and then, I should have a small celebration. So far, I’ve washed the dishes. I expect to ramp up the party.
OK. Back to the mechanics of writing a book. Scroll back through this blog, and you can read about the progression through the various drafts. The eighth draft has been my self-imposed last chance to change things. The seventh draft nearly completed the story. As I edited the eighth, a few things were tweaked. Readers may never know the difference.
The eighth draft had three phases: a chaotic to-do list, the non-AI suggestions from Grammarly, and cleaning up some mistakes that both Grammarly and myself found.
That chaotic to-do list was largely covered in the seventh draft, but there’s always something that catches the eye and makes me cringe. Uncringe. Lots of little details that are so small that I won’t list them. You’ll have yours.
The biggest task was feeding the text through Grammarly. Ideally, Grammarly could take in the entire text, crunch on it, make its suggestions, score it as-is, let me say yes or no to its ideas, score it again, and be done. Nope.
Life isn’t ideal.
The reality is (at the time I used Grammarly for this book);
“In any 30-day period, you can check up to 300 documents or 150,000 words.
In any 24-hour period, you can check up to 100 documents or 50,000 words.”
My story is over 115,000 words. Not going to happen in a day. That’s OK. But it made sense to break it up into chunks that didn’t overwhelm the software or my brain (or my carpal tunnel, et al.) Fortunately, the story chronicles about twenty days of life on the alien planet, their new home (AintEarth). OK. A day a day and get it done.
‘Get comfy’ would be good advice, but I’ve moved into a tiny house, so ergonomics are continually being negotiated.
I am glad I have Grammarly available. This isn’t an ad for the software, but as I’ve written and said, I know so many editors that picking one might upset the others. By using Grammarly, they can all be equally upset.
Grammarly is also easier to ignore. I don’t use the AI feature. I’m a writer. My imperfections are part of my humanity. Grammarly is authoritative, and apparently usually correct, but I want the book to sound like me, not a machine. (And you can be sure it would fix that sentence.) I also felt sorry for the software because the story is science fiction. Science is tough enough. Fiction can confuse logic. Every suggestion was measured against whether it made my story better for the reader, particularly readers of the first book.
The process was simple, yet not as simple as the brochure claims. Grammarly shouldn’t strip out formatting, but it does. Not always, but Grammarly has lost indentations, justifications, italicizing, and generally the look of the page. My solution was to open two browser windows: one for a copy of the text, one for Grammarly. Copy a section of the book, paste it into Grammarly, check the word count, wait while Grammarly chugs through a few thousand words, record the score, then review and possibly accept Grammarly’s suggestions. I make the change in Grammarly, so it can filter through to any other parts of the text, and make the real changes to text file. Repeat for each suggestion, then take a break, and give the computer a break too. Record the change in score. Double check the word count.
(Not kidding about the computer taking a break. I tend to leave files and tabs open until the task is done. Digital clutter accumulates, I guess, because things slow down after a while.)
The word count is one way to see if I’ve slipped a mouse click and deleted a section. It also explains why some sections take longer for Grammarly to complete. Cranking through two or three sections a day meant I was done in eight days – or would’ve been if I hadn’t taken some time for – you know – life.
The score was an indication of whether my time and the software’s expense was worth it. I’ve done this for two books and several blog posts, and in general, my scores typically improve by about half a grade level. I was rarely an A student, so am not surprised and happy to accept a very high B. (The software doesn’t measure it that way, it uses a 100-point scale, but the letter grades convey at least some emotion.) The biggest improvement for me is listening to comma corrections. Your results will differ.
Remember and a reminder: A 1% error rate, a 99% correct rate in a 100,000-word book would mean 1,000 errors. Check your expectations and your humanity. If you ‘only’ have 100 errors, you have a 0.1% error rate and a 99.9% correct rate. Go for 100% perfect if you want; but I have a life to live.
The next draft has already begun. As I backed up the file, sent copies to friends for more backup protection, and downloaded copies to media, I was also opening a new folder, renaming files to version control, and lots of little tasks that I do from habit.
As I finished, one major item was resolved. The title arrived. Somehow, I managed to attend the Port Townsend Film Festival as I was also editing the book. Festivals are great, but there are also times when gaps happen. I had a small notebook and launched myself at the page, writing down ultra-short phrases. Somewhere in there would be a title. Because it is a sequel, I played off the first book. The first book was named after one of the characters, the alien, Firewatcher.
Start with a list of character names. Nothing was distinctive enough. The names were either too common or too obscure.
Play with the words: fire, watcher. Ah. Fire in the title helps brand the series. Possible. Find a verb for the second word, and notice a good candidate was on the list. Have you noticed my hesitancy? That’s because I only want to reveal it after the cover art and marketing text are complete. Loading them into kdp will cement them then.
And, you can see that my mind has already moved on to the next draft, the next phase. I’ll list the formatting and design stuff later. For now, my fingers need some rest. I don’t need a drink, but it’s too late to go out for a dessert. Maybe popcorn with Lots of butter.
Stay tuned. Things are about to get serious, and the book should be available for sale!
(Grammarly didn’t like this post as much as usual. Hey, I’m only human.)
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