I’m taking a short break from editing to talk about how close I’ve come to throwing this book
in the garbage.

I know, ironic isn’t it? While I was writing the book I felt confident, I felt good, I felt really proud that the sequel to The Silver Ninja fixed all the problems from the first one. I felt that the characters were better, the plot made more sense, and that there was plenty of action to keep it entertaining until the end.

Then I sent it off to my editor and discovered that the reality doesn’t live up to the myth.

-Unlikeable characters
-Weak prose
-Confusing plot lines
-Too much focus on relationships

I won’t lie, the critique stung. I felt like all the hard work I did still wasn’t good enough, but this is what I hired the editor for. I wanted someone that would keep it real and make my book excellent. Having her work on the book made me feel very bi-polar. I was ecstatic that she was ripping up my book and depressed that she was ripping up my book.

Whatever, right? I went in and started going through the notes, fixing things as I went along. I told myself, “I can recover from this. A few changes here and there and the book will be good as new.”

As I continued to make changes to the book, the critiques would get harsher and harsher. Finally I went to my girlfriend who is the equivalent of “the buck stops here” and asked her for her thoughts.

She agreed.

Now I was starting to question the quality of my book, was it only good in my mind? I told my girlfriend that I’ll go back to the drawing board and start doing some re-writes to get this book back on track.

I spent day and night working on the book, changing the dialogue, trying to show not tell, revising the language and prose. I finally arrived at a scene that I thought read well and excitedly showed my g/f the day after.

“This doesn’t make sense. That word shouldn’t be there. You’re telling again instead of showing.”

I leaned back in my chair, stared at the blinking cursor on my screen, and put my hands on the keyboard. One thumb pressed ALT and the other finger press F4. I slammed them both simultaneously. “Are you sure you want to close this window?” Yes. “Are you sure you want to close this window?” Yes. “Are you sure you want to close this window?” YES!”
All that was left after my meltdown was the wallpaper of Cindy smiling at the camera.

I said, “I can’t write this damn book. Every time I edit, I make more mistakes. I can’t make the language better, I don’t know how to show, I keep putting commas in the wrong spots. I should cut my losses and forget about writing this book series.”

My g/f talked to me in a calm, very matter-of-fact voice and said, “I’m not saying it’s bad. You just need to change a few words around, that’s all.”

Although I felt better, enough to at least reopen the document. I wasn’t confident that I could write the book as well as I imagined it to be.

Later that night, I usually have a ritual before going to bed. After doing some edits, I’ll hop into a video game for a few hours and then hit the sack. It’s a good way to relax and lets me enjoy myself after another grueling day of editing. Well instead, I decided to finish reading Wool by Hugh Howey and started reading Stephen King’s The Shining because…

I’ve never read a Stephen King book.

What an eye opener. Hugh Howey has incredible and vivid descriptions in Wool that let me visualize and know what he was talking about, before he told me what he was talking about. His prose was very “by the books” and didn’t use any strange language to try to beautify anything. It was simple, to the point, with a few flourishes thrown in to keep things interesting.

Stephen King is the opposite of that. He breaks all the rules of writing in The Shining. He uses parenthesis for flashbacks and doesn’t capitalize his letters or throw in any commas. He tells the reader how a character is feeling and sometimes makes it seem like he’s jumping POV’s from one character to the next. He’ll use weird punctuation, italics, and all sorts of things that I would never dream of using in my book. But you know what?

It works.

It works because every time he goes off on a tangent that fills in the history of a character, I read it. Every time he uses internal dialogue to express a flashback or feelings for another character, I read it. Every time he repeats a phrase and switches to the POV of a different character without any rhyme or reason, I read it and I love it.

The Shining is quite possibly, the most addictive book I’ve read. It was through reading The Shining and Wool that I had my epiphany.

I haven’t read enough books.

It’s true. I simply haven’t taken the time to actually –read– a book in order to understand why a sentence was constructed the way it was. Why is this word here, why is this punctuation here, what does this description have to do with the plot? Everything needed to have a purpose. You can’t just throw in world building details for the sake of world building. It has to reveal something new to you, build the image in your head, let your imagination fill in the blanks.

I used to think that reading another writer’s work would make my own ideas less original.

That was a mistake.

Reading another writer’s work helps you to understand why you see the sweat on Jack Torrance’s brow; Why you feel the fire licking against Juliette’s back (not Romeo and Juliet); Why you can believe that an entire civilization could thrive inside a nuclear silo.

It’s because they carefully pore over their words and tighten the prose so that only the essential text remains. It’s more than just a movie scene because you see things that you wouldn’t typically see in a movie. You get to experience the world through the characters eyes.

There is still much that I need to learn and a lot of reading that I need to do, but I think The Silver Ninja may just pull through yet.

So without further ado, I present to you an excerpt from The Silver Ninja: Indoctrination.

THE SILVER NINJA: INDOCTRINATION – EXCERPT

BEFORE:

She grabbed the door handle—boom!

The door exploded in front of her in a blast of splinters and metal. [redacted – *spoilers*] smacked into the wall behind her and felt a loud ringing in her ears. She caught a hint of explosive powder in the air and blinked her eyes until the blurriness went away.

AFTER:

[redacted – *spoilers*] grabbed the door handle and pulled it back.

A tremendous force pushed into her chest and rattled the bones of her ribcage. Her hair blew back and a searing heat cut into the front half of her body as she went airborne. The back of her head cracked into the checkerboard floor, her body sliding across the slick surface. A high pitch tone rang in her ears, blocking out all of the sounds that surrounded her. As the tone began to dissipate she could hear the rumble of fire and the incessant blare of fire alarms. The air was saturated with the smell of gunpowder, dusty and steely.

Does this read better? I think so.

Leave a comment and let me know if you agree.

I’m going to get back to editing so that you could have The Silver Ninja: Indoctrination sometime in April.

See you then!