Daniel Nick’s May Newsletter
War Dog is in Edits and Alpha readers are tearing it apart for me! Yay!
This is NOT the actual cover, because as you all know, I’m going the traditional publishing route if possible. But I’m a visual guy, so I had to have SOMETHING! And this was a low cost option.
I hope to be able to start querying agents in June, and I’ll let you know how all that goes.
Now is a good time to explain my writing process a tiny bit. I come from a theatre background, so I write focused on dialogue. I’ll sit down and write what my characters say and do as the chapter unfolds until I’m either out of time for the day, or out of ideas.
The next day, I’ll re-read what I wrote and do structural edits, and additions of descriptions. That primes me to write the dialogue of what comes next. Rinse. Repeat.
What this means is that I essentially write my rough draft and my first draft at the same time. This is a fairly polished story, that needs lots of grammar, spelling, and fine tuning edits, but shouldn’t need anything major (fingers crossed!)
This month I will global search for crap words, lazy words, and over used words. I’ll look for clunky dialogue, and I’ll listen very carefully to suggestions from my Alpha readers. After those edits happen, I’ll feel confident in my manuscript enough to start the Query process.
I’ve also started the second book, tentatively titled The Hands that Feed.
I know this is a short newsletter, but I promise a fun short story next month and some more updates about everything!
