Monday, June 7, 2010

Concentration

Today was spent on writing over 4,800 words and editing over 10,000. What I realized while working was how much I have left to do before I can hand the book over to my editor and the beta readers.

Broadcast 6 tells a broader story than Broadcast 5, and I'd have it no other way. What I'm doing now, during this preliminary editing phase, is writing in sections and cutting away others so every moment lives up to its full potential. Characters have to develop properly, the story has to be plausible and entertaining. The dialog must pop and flow. The book must feel whole. I'm adding entire chapters, and I've removed an entire perspective that was distracting and drew attention away from the important journeys taken by characters in this book.

Yes, that's a lot of work, but I'm really enjoying it and, more importantly, it must be done. This isn't a post about how this book will take longer than expected, however. No, we're finished with that. The final release date has been set, the link to it is at the end of this post.

In this post I'm telling you that I'm dropping off the radar while I concentrate on getting this done.

Some time while I was editing I realized how often I tabbed out to another program. Whether I was checking forum posts, Twitter or Facebook, they were all needless distractions, and my work flow will go much more smoothly without them. I'll get all this done on time, and I"ll be more focused so producing work I'm happy with earlier on will be easier.

So if you're wondering why my Twitter feed is dead, or my Facebook wall is bare over the next week or two, know that I'm doing something more important: putting my finishing touches on Spinward Fringe Broadcast 6: Fragments, getting it off to my editor and beta readers. Immediately following the completion of this book, I'll be getting to work on Broadcast 7.

The only thing I'll be watching other than my word processor, is the counter on the front page of this site.

RL

See you on the other side!

5 comments:

Andy Taylor said...

Good luck. You can do it!

Unknown said...

I for one, cannot wait....keep writing!

Unknown said...

I for one, cannot wait...keep writing!!

Jeremy said...

I'm so glad that I found your series of books on smashwords. I just found them about two weeks ago, and I'm already on Fracture. I can't wait for the next one to come out so the series continues.

I have one single criticism, and it's not directed at you, as your writing style is fantastic. There are several places in the books where quotation marks are used incorrectly, and it could simply be from the PDF versions that I've downloaded. I've found a couple of instances where it makes it difficult to understand if a character is talking due to the way the quotes are used.

Anyway, that's my only criticism. Excellent, fantastic work on the writing.

Unknown said...

I'm finishing up Triton and recently discovered there were more books! I'm super picky about what I read, I like to be entertained, engulfed, and I like that feeling of wanting more and more. After reading a few of Jeff Long's books (The Descent, Deeper, and Year Zero) I couldn't find much else to be entertained by, until "Origins". I was brought to a world on the fringe of the universe and I was completely captivated by captain Jacob Valance and the crew of the First Light. I can't wait until broadcast 7 and many more to come. I will be watching, tweeting, and facebooking about Mr. Lalonde and the fantastic job he does.