Had a couple of days away apparently. Traffic and my car don’t really want to cooperate. The one thing I can say though is that when something is on the horizon that you really want to do, then everything seems to be high stress right before it.

Here I am a week before I toss my hat into the writing world and even little things seem to be getting me all stressed out. I spent most of today going over the formatting of the book, making sure all of the number of lines for the first page of each chapter are the same.

Talk about anal retentive. I was also fretting over the back cover blurp, because what else is there to do when you are getting close. I have found myself resubmitting the interior file about once every two days. Are there rewrites? Missing content? Nope. Just the little things, like making sure the page numbers in the table of contents are right. Or adding this web address, or making sure I am plugging the next two books in the series (as if this one is going to be a big hit).

One never knows though, so better safe than sorry. So I find myself going over the darn thing time and time again to make sure that it is fine. I mean I am happy with the actual context of the book, but I had to rearrange a couple of things as well. The data dump at the start was a bit much. I had originally written it as two chapters. That is the problem with a story that takes place in a world the the writer creates.

We have to make sure that you have enough information to know what is going on, but at the same time not bludgeon you to death with exposition. In the case of my story you have to know what is going on, as well as how the culture works. Character is the main thing though. So I have to introduce you to the people, but make sure you have an idea about the stakes. Thus world building is key.

There is world building throughout the story, but I needed to get some of it up front so the reader can know why it is important, there in lies the dilemma. I am hoping I made it a little better. We shall see, shan’t we?

Till next time.