Well then. My little video experiment was a massive success! (For those wondering what I’m talking about, take a look at my September 2020 Update post here where I came up with the idea and my first VLOG post here where it started.)
I finished the first draft of Soulformer way back at the beginning of June. It took me just over five months of solid writing to get there and it felt great. Then, I made the tiny, little, itty bitty baby mistake of immediately diving back in to revise it for draft 2. I knew there would have to be some heavy editing, especially in the beginning where I was just flying by the seat of my pants, but I don’t think I fully realized at the time just how extensive it would be. I essentially had to rewrite the first half of the book, and that can be pretty discouraging. It can also be hard to repeat a story all over again immediately after you finish, so starting right away was a bad idea. The following months were also insanely busy and full of many other things occupying my mind, so I slacked off pretty hard.
I think the hardest part during this time was the idea that maybe I didn’t love writing as much as I thought I did. I typically do my writing at night after the kids are in bed and I started finding myself distracted with other things and finding excuses not to revise the story (which didn’t help the guilt I felt that I wasn’t writing and accomplishing my goal to get the book out to beta readers). I realized that I wasn’t really holding myself accountable for writing, and that can be a pretty good motivator. So, I came up with the daily video idea.
Let me tell you, it was amazing. My initial idea was just to get a little bit of writing done everyday so that I could at least make some progress. That turned in to a goal of at least half a chapter revised a day (that was made easier by the fact I soon got through that first half of the book and it became less of a rewrite and more of a polish). I think I ended up getting more done than I thought was possible.
In four weeks’ time, I revised over 114 pages which amounts to 14 1/2 chapters. In the three months leading up to that point, I had only revised 15 1/2 chapters. I nearly doubled my output in less than a month. As of right now, I have less than 12 chapters to go before draft 2 is complete.
I also learned after doing these videos that filming and editing those videos took up a bit too much time. By the end of week 4 I was ready to be done. However, I didn’t want to give up that daily accountability, so I decided to simply give daily updates on my twitter (which you can find here).
This month’s update is a bit shorter seeing as I kept everyone up to date with every single day of writing in each of my weekly VLOG posts. However, next month’s post (I hope) will be a bit of a celebratory one seeing the end of draft 2.
As a reminder, I still plan on providing a beta reader specific post on my expectations and some tips for beta readers that I’ve previously researched. I’ve already got a few beta readers ready to go (a couple were initial alpha readers who wanted to keep going), but if you’re interested in becoming a beta reader, feel free to reach out to me at chase.gluch@gmail.com with the email titled “Beta Reader Request”. I’m looking for people who love fantasy novels and are willing to put in a bit of time reading a (what is currently) 380+ page book to give constructive feedback. If you want a brief synopsis of the plot, you can find that here on my site.
Thanks everyone! Until next month.