The Silver Ninja: A Bitter Winter Progress Update

I just made progress on The Silver Ninja: A Bitter Winter! So far I’m 74% complete on the Editing 1st Pass phase. 27 Days remain until the deadline.

The Silver Ninja: A Bitter Winter
Phase:Editing 1st Pass
Due:7 years ago
74.2%

Hey friends,

It’s a miracle that I’ve made this much progress on the book. After going away on a fun adventure in Puerto Rico in August, I returned to work and walked into a wall of high priority assignments that needed to get done. High priority meaning that the book had to go last in my list of important things to do. My usual routine of writing on the train and sneaking in a few words at work during lunch have been replaced with naps and working while eating.

Not fun.

To add onto that . . . I had scheduled an interview with a police officer which was supposed to have taken place this week. Unfortunately, due to the demands of my job I had to cancel and miss out on an opportunity to do some much needed fact-checking for my book.

Very disappointing.

However, I do have some good news and that’s something I’d like to share with you now.

First, I’d like to explain this nifty new progress bar I have. There are several invisible components that are being used to create this progress bar. (You can download a free version here: My Book Progress )

These include: Outline | Writing | Editing 1st Pass | Editing 2nd Pass | Editing 3rd Pass | Proofing

Each of these are customized to suit my needs. With the outline, it’s % based. With writing, it’s based on Chapters rather than words. (I don’t worry about word count, I just focus on getting something done.) Editing is also based on chapters. Proofing will most likely be based on pages once I know how many pages the book will be.

When I get a spare moment, I’ll go into the app and update the progress. This app will then give me an overall gauge as to how much I’m writing and if I’ll be able to hit my deadline. I won’t tell you what those deadlines are because there is a high chance I’m going to miss them. What I can say is that this progress bar is a very nifty tool to have at your disposal if you want to get an idea of how fast you’re writing and if you’re going to hit your goals. It’s not fool proof because life happens, but it does come in handy in figuring out how fast you can write.

So far I have almost all the chapters written and according to this 74% 1st pass edited. 1st pass means I’m not adding my voice or style, I’m simply making sure that the content makes sense and logically flows from scene to scene.

So that’s good news number one!

Good news number two is that the book itself feels like it’s in good shape. Scenes have purpose, characters have agency, and everyone feels a lot more fleshed out and easier to write. In the past, I used to be completely flummoxed by how to write Jonas and Michael. Now that I’ve gone through the effort of fleshing out their backstories, molding their personalities, understanding their quirks, it’s much easier for me to write them as characters with depth and not stereotypes.

But what about Cindy? What about Cindy indeed…

If I had to use one word to describe her it would be, “dangerous.”

I’m just going to leave it at that. There’s much more to talk about, but we’ll save that for another time when the writing portion is complete.

(And for those who care I am currently reading:)

Lazarus

The Punisher “Max” – Vol. 1

Declared Hostile by Kevin Miller. (Super excited for this one since it’s in the same series as Raven One, one of my favorite military aviation books *currently of all-time.)

Wilmar Luna

Wilmar Luna

Couldn't be a superhero in real life so he decided to write his own. When he's not creating empowered female characters he can be found watching films, reading books, and playing lots of video games. Buy his books here: https://www.thesilverninja.com/purchase/