I’ve discovered something. Writing a book takes a long time.

In my case, over a year, in fact. However, not all that time was spent writing. And while I spent a lot of time on life; working a fairly difficult job, raising an active daughter and watching the world, I am actually surprised I was able to get it done in the time I did.

Diversions

Could I have done it faster? Yeah, I think so. If I’m to be honest, I probably could have had it done four or five months faster than I did.

Then I think on it again, and I realize I gained a lot of inspiration by doing the other things. The reading, the movies, the games. At times, I chided myself for the time spent on ‘diversions’, but really the time was not spent in vain. A lot was added to the story because of the inspiration gained from those diversions, and it wouldn’t be the book it is without them.

For example, Jaan Perrelis. Jaan is one of my favorite side characters. He’s big, boisterous and fills the scene whenever he enters. He has a scarred eye that has white clouds instead of pupils and rather unsightly. He doesn’t wear an eye patch. He just rocks it like it is, because he likes to freak people out with it, and he ultimately doesn’t care.

Jaan is based off an excavator that did my driveway when I had it paved. This man was just as I described Jaan, to include the injured eye. Within five minutes of talking to me, he was telling things about himself he probably shouldn’t have, but that was him. He didn’t care. He just said whatever came to his mind. That project took time away from writing, but it gave me a great character. Starting out, he was just LUTHIER in my outlines and plotting diagrams. Now he’s Jaan and a fantastic character.

The draft is still rough. I need to beef up and flesh out the world building and make sure my character voices are fantastic, but a lot turned out great on the first draft, and I’m happy with what I did. It was the diversions that sometimes added that extra idea, that level up to something that wasn’t quite mature. So I try not to beat myself up about taking so long, because in the end the book is better for some of that time spent away from the keyboard.

The Good

I decided to make a side arch of who will become an important character later in the series, Jolina Winfeld. You will hear a lot about her, particularly as she comes out more in later books. For The Songsman, however, she had no presence originally. I changed that, because I’m so excited about her that I wanted to get her in sooner. So I made a side arch of her in the form of a few Interludes, and it turned out great. I even tied it in to the main narrative in a way that really grabbed me and when you read it, I’m sure you’ll pump your fist in the air too.

I also love the climax of the main arch. I love the plot paths that let to it and how it tied them all up. I love the big reveals and how my adrenaline was pumping just writing it, even though I knew what was going to happen. It is a scene I’ve had in my head for about twenty years, since I first started imagining my world and its characters. It has morphed over the time and some of the characters have changed, but the scene is real now, and it’s amazing. It came together even better than I had envisioned it so many years ago.

The Concerns

The only major concern I have is for the beginning of the main character’s arch. Delarin is a Songsman, basically a travelling musician. While he’s interesting, and I handle the initial scenes well, I have to make sure those initial scenes hook readers along to the point where we find not everything is as it seems. When the arch gets to that point, some more action oriented conflict takes over doing the heavy lifting of hooking the reader to the climax. I think it’s good as is, but I am a little concerned that I need a little extra kick on the front half of his arch.

World building. I’m a world builder and I love it. My writing style is more to let the reader see and figure out things as they need it to facilitate the story and the characters, as opposed to explicitly dropping it in front of them. I am strategic about how and where I slip in the world building information. The trick with The Songsman, is that it is book one of a long series. I want to make sure that all the elements I introduce in this book are concrete and won’t change. This adds extra time as I really have to think about all the details, names etc. and set them up so that the rest of the series sets well on top of it all. It’s not a challenge I had expected, and it’s something I need to do a full revision pass to make sure it’s good to go.

Conclusion

It took awhile, but I think all in all I nailed it. When I hire an editor, I expect they will redefine ‘nailed’ for me, so I’ll stay humble and just be glad I have something I’m proud of.