Long-term Progress
I read a post on social media recently where an author talked about how far they’ve come as a writer since the beginning of their journey. I know I’ve alluded to it a few times myself, but I haven’t ever specifically addressed it here.
So, now I am.
I started writing novel-length “stories” in middle school. The first was titled The Adventures of Brad and Kris, and while it was fun and hilarious for me at the time, it’s a story that will never be published. I was in seventh grade when I wrote that, which means I was…thirteen?
But the process wasn’t entirely a futile exercise. Some of the ideas and characters I came up with were valid on their own and may have contributed a smidge to my current writing project. More so the characters than the ideas, to be honest.
Back then, my writing was just a hobby. I dreamed of landing a publishing contract one day, but I didn’t know a single thing about the process, and when someone kindly attempted to explain it, I ignored them. I thought I knew everything. Teenagers, right? (Yes, I am rolling my eyes at my past self here.)
It wasn’t until the latter half of my thirties that I began to write seriously. I was no longer interested in doing it as a hobby. I wanted to share my work with the world, and I started to research the tedious process of publishing. I still wanted to land a traditional publishing deal, and after writing Exile, I believed I finally had a story an agent might be interested in.
While I queried, I continued to write. I realized if I put my mind to it, I was capable of cranking out two or three full-length novels a year. Prior to that time, it took me years to finish a single manuscript, but as I said, I treated it as a hobby. I wasn’t focused. But my goals and outlook changed.
I’ve written about my experience with Hunted before, so I won’t reiterate. You can read the post here: The Hunted Journey.
What I didn’t mention in that original post was the state of that manuscript when I returned to revise it ten years after writing it.
Yes, it was edited not long after I finished it. Yes, I had beta reader feedback, which I incorporated. But looking at it again ten years and four books later showed me two things:
- My writing was much better with the additional practice.
- Time away from the project allowed me to catch errors I missed before. (And this was after the feedback/edits I mentioned.)
While I queried Exile, I finished writing the rest of the series, revised it, and got more beta feedback. And I kept writing.
I didn’t look at Exile again for another two years, but in that time, I wrote another three books and rewrote my trilogy from the awful state it had been in when I wrote it as a teenager. I count it as writing six books total, since the trilogy rewrite was an 100% overhaul of all three books and not one sentence is the same between the original and what was released in 2022. I’ve written about that previously too, and you can read it here: The Great Announcement.
Six books were written between Legend and when I returned to Exile (The Triad Murders, Oracle, The Moon’s Eye rewrite, The Talisman of Delucha rewrite, War of the Nameless rewrite, and The Ballad of Alchemy and Steel). But I was still confident Exile was in great shape.
Then reality kicked in early last year, when I made the decision to stop querying and publish Exile myself. Oh, that manuscript was better than anything I’d written prior to it, but it still needed help. A lot of help. I think I went through it four more times before sending it to an official editor.
Those six books helped me hone my style and voice, gave me the confidence to promote my new content, and really see where the issues were in my writing, along with my tendencies, both good and bad. While Exile and its subsequent books didn’t get a full rewrite like my trilogy did, I made significant updates to the phrasing throughout the series. It was a chore…
One that is still on-going. While I’ve been through the other books several times now, Guardian is the only one at the publication-ready state as of this writing. I’d like to go through both Harbinger and Legend a final time before they go to my editor, but I’m on a revision break at the moment. I needed to focus my energy on the sci-fi project I’ve mentioned a few times.
On a final note, I don’t think I really found my voice as a writer until Oracle. When I returned to revise it seven months after writing it, I was stunned at how good it actually was.
Long story short: Time and practice does make one a better writer. It’s only in retrospect that we see how much we’ve progressed.