On November 2nd 2013 the rough draft of The Silver Ninja II: Indoctrination was completed. I was very anxious to show some of my writing to someone, ANYONE that would listen. Sure I’ve posted tiny snippets here and there, but none of them were an expression of how much I have learned in my writing.

Well as usual, my girlfriend came over (after I bought her a lovely bouquet of flowers) and I decided to redeem my brownie points and asked her to read a portion of my book. Not the whole thing, just one of the scenes that I was very inspired to write. She’s one of my harshest critics and the one I needed to impress if my writing has improved. It had to pass by her standards because most of the time, she’s right. The 1st book had it’s issues and she pointed them out. But like I said a million times before, I didn’t really have the time or knowledge to correct them.

Anyway, she started reading through the piece I selected. It was an action scene where I had closed my eyes and started typing whatever came to mind. I thought it was riveting, but whether it came across that way was debatable. It was so much fun to write and I couldn’t wait to see her reaction. She turned to me after having finished the passage and gave me a look of disappointment, I was just crushed.

“That was very good.”

SHE TRICKED ME! And then she said something that really resonated with me, something that made me feel like all that studying was starting to pay off.

“Now you sound like a writer.” And then she clarified. “When you wrote the first book, you sounded like someone trying to be a fancy, creative writer. But it made it seem like you were trying too hard. This part that I read, I could see everything and visualize what you were saying. It’s much, much better than your first book.”

That was high praise from someone who was sick and tired of hearing me talk about the Silver Ninja. But what she said about being a writer, was very true. When I was writing the first book, I tried to think of every possible way to make my prose sound fancy and beautiful. It was poetic and flowery and overly descriptive, and in the end it came off as terrible writing. Ironic isn’t it?

This is a case of trying too hard syndrome. But I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know about beta readers, didn’t fully understand the craft, and quite frankly, I didn’t know I was going to publish a book. Like Zoe Markham said in her review of my 1st book. This is paraphrased mind you – “It’d be really nice if he’d pick like 1 or 2 similes, rather than fill the book with them.”

So what did I do? Let me reiterate what I said in previous blog posts. I read some books, I organized my thoughts, and then I practiced, practiced, practiced my writing. And what did I learn from practice? Check out my top 6 suggestions down below:

1.) Use less description, let the mind’s eye fill in the gaps. Sounds obvious, but writer’s have a habit of thinking that their reader doesn’t get it. So what do they do? They fill it with more description until their imagination can’t visualize it because the author told them how it was supposed to look.

2.) Stop repeating yourself. I said, stop repeating yourself! As a writer, it’s very easy to forget that you already made your point two sentences ago. Or sometimes, five paragraphs ago. Yes, even if you wrote it a few pages ago, readers will remember what you said, keep going. The reminders should be very infrequent.

3.) Poetic prose is useful in select locations. If the entire book is told this way, well then you’re writing poetry, not a novel. Beautiful language is distracting and interrupts the flow, use it at key moments rather than throughout the entire book.

4.) Use less words but make them powerful, quality over quantity. If your character is doing a back flip. Don’t describe the process in a laborious step by step basis. [She grabbed her knees, bent her legs, and rolled through the air.] No, just say she f’ing flipped! Or, she rolled through the air. Got it?

5.) Where your words appear on the page and how they appear–is… important. (Ya feel me dawg?)

6.) You are painting with words, but remember that it’s just the art of laying bricks. One word after another to form prose. Don’t think too hard. As Neil Gaiman says, just put one word in front of another and do it 80,000 times.

But obviously and most importantly, as comic book writer Brian Michael Bendis says. “Read authors you love, analyze how they write, dismantle it, reverse engineer it, and practice, practice, practice. You will only improve if you continue to write.”

I am really, super excited to share The Silver Ninja II with you. If you’re interested in beta reading, send me an e-mail @ [email protected] or contact me on goodreads, or the facebook page. I’m only opening this to a select few, so it’s a first come first serve basis.

Catch you all later.