Vessel is due out tomorrow, so make sure you’ve got your 99p/99c ready and waiting. I’m going to go back to running around in circles now—bye!

Argh! Vessel is out in a week and I don’t know what to think. On the one hand, I’m a marching band of jitterbugs on a trampoline in an earthquake, buzzing with more excitement than the queue at Peppa Pig World, and on the other hand I’d rather scrap the whole thing and pretend it never happened. P-day is incoming and, to be frank, I’m bricking it.

If you’ve never had the opportunity to publish work of your own, I’ll try and lay down how I feel right now about it all. This isn’t a ‘woe is me’ type of story; I don’t expect you to feel sorry for me. I’m simply trying to pass each agonising second between now and August the 1st. Writing a book is a journey and a half. There are highs and lows, distant horizons and lights at the end of tunnels that turn out to be high-speed locomotives. You lay your soul out on the floor and pick it apart bit by tedious bit. The resulting composition is more than a collection of words for its creator: it’s a piece of them, a chapter of their own lives laid out in paper and ink (or pixels). Each line carries a memory with it, be it pleasure at its inventiveness or shame at the multitude of times it took to get right. Some chapters sat side by side with the death of a loved one, others with the union of two of the living; it’s as much historical non-fiction as it is fiction—you just have to read between the lines to see it.

And now I’m going to take that portion of my life, my personality, my growth and my shame, and lay it out for all to see. Some will smile and clap, others will spit and jeer. Each word is sent on a direct expressway to my heart, fresh and raw and ready to tear me in two. Every review, every rating—or indeed the lack of those things—is a slight against me, against who I am, and I accept that. That doesn’t mean I like it. And to make matters worse, for every negative review I take to heart, there’s a positive one that I simply can’t believe. You know, I’d go so far as to say it’s a traumatic experience.

Well, that’s enough bleeding heart nonsense from me. Vessel is out very, very soon, and I couldn’t be more excited. I hope it lives up to the expectations of all you people who have followed my journey (and thank you for joining me along the way) and those who have yet to become a part of it. The next blog post I write will be on the other side—see you there.

Following on from a previous blog post where I jotted down my thoughts on plot versus characterisation, I noted that characterisation has to work far harder in the literary medium than it does in the film. That said, I didn’t explore the hows, wheres, whats, whens and, in particular, the whos of characterisation. Why? Truth be told, it’s because I don’t know the answer. It’s a journey I’m taking, a skill I’m learning, and it remains to be seen whether or not I’m getting any closer to the writer’s holy grail of crafting a believable and relatable protagonist.

What I can do in the meantime is suggest what I think makes a good protagonist. Here lies the disclaimer: what I’m about to say isn’t gospel—in fact it’s as far from it as it can possibly be. It’s amateurish guesswork at best. But that’s not say it’s definitely wrong, because I could guess and guess well. We’ll see.

A good protagonist doesn’t have to be good. By that I mean they don’t have to be fighting for the ‘goodies’. It makes life a whole lot easier if they are, but having readers care for a ‘bad guy’ is so much more of an achievement. That’s because the number one rule, in my amateurish opinion, is that the reader has to identify with them. Doesn’t matter how good the plot is, how badass the protagonist is—if you think they’re a dick, you won’t read on. So if the protagonist is a baddie, the writer needs to be clever in how they take the imagination of a normal law-abiding citizen and turn it to empathise with the actions of someone who’s done wrong.

Bad guys—particularly when they’re secondary characters—have a nasty habit of becoming two-dimensional cut-outs with no structure to them beyond an evil laugh and an inexplicable desire to live in a volcano. But bad guys are people too; they have thoughts and feelings, they wonder what the weather’s going to be like and they take their dogs for walks. As a writer, if you treat them like a person, build them up as someone who lives life as a day-to-day struggle, your readers will connect. The recent TV show Breaking Bad does a wonderful job of cajoling you as a viewer into empathising with protagonist Walter White, who, when given the news that he has cancer and only a few short months to live, uses his chemistry skills to cook meth and build a fund for his family when he’s gone. You see him, a normal guy, get swept into an unknown world, and you’re right there with him, and you care because he cares. It’s emotional blackmail when you think about it: the writers are saying, ‘here’s this nice guy, but things aren’t going too well for him right now. Maybe you should stick around to make sure he’s ok, cos, y’know, you’re a decent human being and that’s what decent human beings do.’

So we, as readers, do. The protagonist becomes our responsibility, and we’ve got to make sure they make it through to the end of the book. You know it’s done well when you finish the story and feel empty, like you’ve just lost a friend. Those manipulative writers forced you care . . .

But I don’t think it’s a simple as making the protagonist the kind of person you’d sit down with for a beer. Oftentimes, the ones you care most about are the ones you wouldn’t want to spend any time with at all, yet you seem obliged to feel bad for them from a distance. The disgruntled alcoholic cop who only ever works alone is a tried-and-tested example that works almost every time. It’s hackneyed, yes, but it works, and people enjoy it. If crime books were about cops with nice families and big houses and perfect lives, readers wouldn’t care less. Social pariahs need care, so they end up as our protagonists. The affliction doesn’t have to be as bare-faced as being a drug-addicted school drop-out that’s only two more hits away from heaven: sometimes the subtleties are all that’s needed. A normal guy with a normal job that gets put in a difficult situation can engender just as much sympathy if it’s done right.

Meet John, for example. He works in an office, nine to five, as a structural engineer. He’s nearly sixty, he has a nice house, a comfortable lifestyle, and his three kids have all grown up and left the nest. But recently he feels he’s been growing apart from his Sheila, his wife. Nothing bad’s been said, nothing’s really happened at all, but . . . he doesn’t know why, but the silence left behind when his youngest set off for university just keeps on getting louder. He stays late at work to avoid the twisting awkwardness of the gulf between him and Sheila, working himself into a knot of stress and anxiety. He wants to speak out but his voice won’t let him. There’s nothing he can do—no—nothing he can bear to do. So he sits in the office, watching the minutes tick by one by one, wishing each one was his last.

Now, with any luck you’ll feel a little sympathy towards old John here, even though nothing particularly bad has happened to him. Because the situation is one we all so inherently dread, it should be easy to relate to John’s feelings of confusion and despair. Perhaps you have some suggestions for John, and that’s good because it means you care enough to want to help. As the writer, it is then my job to carry the story forward without then frustrating the reader by making John take the dumb choice at every turn. I see that a lot, and it’s a cheap way to progress a plot that leaves a reader exasperated. Why, John, why didn’t you just step to the side when that boulder rolled down the hill after you? Are you stupid?

My last musing on the topic is the quality of believability. Readers have to believe in what our protagonists are doing, believe the decisions they make are sensible and rational, believe the reactions to their surroundings are genuine. Like a magic eye picture, a reader sinks into a book in a strange zen-state of semi-awareness, and unbelievable behaviour is a poke right in the eye for them, throwing them completely and leaving them with a distorted view of things. And as a subset of believability, its important to have consistency, too: changing behaviour and personality will leave a reader just as sore-eyed.

Well, I suppose that concludes this week’s unstructured ramble. I hope some of it makes sense, and I hope some of it is true. I strongly feel that what I’ve said isn’t far from reality, and with a little bit of luck I can heed my own advice and make something of it.

PS Two weeks today until the launch of Vessel! Exciting times!

Fellow writer and blogger Dave Farmer recently posted a summary of a character from his up-coming novel The Range. Dave kindly invited me to continue the theme, so I’m going to use this as an opportunity to introduce you all to a character from my next book, the project I’m working on now Vessel is complete. Here are the questions:

I, like many other budding authors, believed in first time success. Actually, that’s not quite what I mean, because there are many authors whose first novels do well, and deservedly so. In better terms, I believed the ability to write was gifted, not earned. Sounds silly when put like that, but how many times have you heard someone say, ‘everyone’s got a book in them’, or, ‘you should write that as a book, it’ll be really good’? Sure, there are people that have had some great experiences, but the assumption that a good idea is all that’s required to convey it with believability and authenticity on paper is way off.

It wasn’t that long ago that I realised this myself, that the mastery of writing is as much a skill as the construction of plot. Which brings me to the subject matter of today’s post: which is more important, characterisation or plot? It’s a question that raises an important oversight that many new writers battle with, and that’s the craftsmanship of both plot and characterisation. I myself am guilty of putting my all into writing plot, setting scenes in my head like a movie director might, transcribing the mental view down onto paper and letting the protagonists tag along for the ride.

Reading has helped me see where I’ve failed and where the masters have succeeded; once I discovered what I was doing wrong it was much easier to realise what others are doing right, to pinpoint it and capitalise on it. Plot is important, yes sir, but it is gear in a train, not a sole driving force, and I wish I’d realised that sooner. Characterisation, well—that’s the lifeblood of the story, the part the reader latches on to, identifies with, the part that makes them care. There are books that rely almost solely on characterisation—but the other way round? Nah.

This rookie mistake of prioritising plot comes, I think, from the misunderstanding that the mediums of film and paper work in the same way. At first glance they seem to, but they don’t and here’s why: in a film, the protagonist’s point-of-view is presented from a third person vantage point. You, the viewer, are a being in the sky that watches over all that happens in the movie, and your identification with the character comes from their dialogue and actions. Verbal narrative is a rare (and often cheesy) way of presenting the protagonist, whereas in a book, verbal narrative is one of the key methods a writer utilises to put the reader into the protagonist’s shoes, even when the book is written in third person.

Also, in a movie you can see when someone is scared, happy, angry etc. It’s on their face, a reaction to the unfolding scene, a subtlety that we absorb without thinking. That doesn’t exist with writing. The reader needs to know how the protagonist is feeling and why, but simply writing ‘he pulled a sad face’ is the equivalent of the movie director cutting to a close shot of the hero pulling a sad face—it’s too obvious, it’s too clunky and it ruins the flow. So a writer must use good characterisation to present the character in an unobtrusive and identifiable way that doesn’t leave the reader feeling either disassociated or overloaded.

The last difference between a movie and a book is the most obvious: a movie is a visual medium, and requires less effort on the part of its audience. Visual effects, cool music, slo-mo etc engages us and gives us the associative hit of adrenaline/sadness/laughter that we seek from these entertaining escapes. Characterisation can take a back seat when visuals takes over, be it a well-choreographed fight, a huge explosion or incredible CGI. Van Damme wouldn’t have got very far if characterisation was an essential part of cinema.

So in my journey to better myself as an author, I’ve discovered that the art of presenting my story in written form is as much a challenge as creating the story in the first place. I’ve also learned that creating believable and identifiable characters is key to keeping a reader interested, more so than the cleverness of the plot. How to create the kind of characters that stay with a reader long after the final page has been read, I still don’t know. I’m working on it. I think I’m improving—I’m certainly changing—but whether it’s for the better remains to be seen.

With Vessel soon to be making its mark on the Amazon charts, it’s about time I started to think about my next endeavour. Truth be told, I’m way past the thinking stage: my next book is steamrolling ahead with about a third of the first draft complete. Once Vessel goes live, I’ll start posting chapters on here to see what you all think (and I value your contributions immensely), but in the meantime, I want to talk a little about how the book came to be.

With Noah’s Ark, I started at the beginning, set fingers to keyboard and typed. Of course, my writing skills were a little more crude back then—and it shows—but it’s the technique that’s of interest here. I simply had an idea about a man leaving a city devastated by an apocalyptic disaster and I ran with it from there.

For Vessel, I took a more formulaic approach. I documented the chapters one by one, building up a plan for the book. As I worked my way through chapter after chapter, I wrote more detailed notes for the oncoming story. To be honest—and this sounds odd—but I’m not sure it helped. As the book materialised, the story changed—and quite dramatically. The method felt a little stifled, and was ultimately unnecessary. The ongoing notes helped, reminding me of key facts and figures along the way, but forcing the story along a predetermined path had all the fluidity of tar.

My new, as yet untitled work took a step back again. I had an idea about an interplanetary geologist sent on a mission to survey a world deemed capable of supporting human life. I also had some further thoughts about where the story might go, but I kept them loose and hazy, concepts carried by a breeze rather than blueprints etched in diamond. And so far the book has been a much more dynamic writing experience, a journey that I, the writer, am discovering along with the protagonist. We’re in it together, so to speak, wondering what’s awaiting us around the corner. With any luck, whatever it is will be entertaining.

After I’d had this revaluation, I read Stephen King’s insightful On Writing. He clarified my findings, saying that he too likes to journey with his protagonist, that any time he tries to become the master of fate his story become flat and lifeless. And his reasoning was as follows: if you, the writer, knows what’s about to happen, chances are the reader will too. And further to that, if you know what’s going to happen, it’s harder to convince a reader that the protagonist didn’t expect it.

This isn’t to say it’s a technique that works for everyone. It probably isn’t. But it’s working for me. Right now, a third of the way into the book, things are starting to take a turn for the worse, and there’s a whole lot of journey to get through until the end. Will it all work out or will it not? Like the avid reader, I have some ideas of my own, but until I read the words there in black and white, I won’t know for sure. And that’s what makes the writing experience enjoyable for me, and with any luck, the reading experience for you.

Good news, everybody! Vessel has a publication date: August the 1st, 2014. Most of the advertising is in place (some of it requires a certain amount of reviews to book, which of course a new release doesn’t have, so rats to that), so fingers crossed the book will climb the charts and be swept away on the tides of Amazon’s algorithms.

Of course, I would be hugely grateful to anyone reading this that buys a copy (it’ll be 99p/99c, so not too much), and doubly grateful to those who leave a review. The book has changed considerably since its publication on here in serial form, so hopefully it will be a worthwhile experience to pay for. Teaser: the final showdown with Bales is a lot different. It’s intense. I’m very pleased with it.

While I’m here, I wanted to talk a little bit about the publishing industry and where it sits right now. You may have heard the news story of a certain big publisher sticking it to Amazon, saying Amazon is crushing authors, but as a non-traditionally published wanna-be, I feel that couldn’t be any further from the truth. Both Amazon and the big publishing houses are out to make money, but only one of them gives new authors a proper chance to make it.

Amazon’s KDP service is pretty simple: you write a book, you publish said book via KDP onto Amazon, you market the book, you add a pinch of luck and hopefully, if it’s good enough, it does well. Yes, it means that anyone who owns or has access to a computer can publish a book, but Amazon has such a high outreach that a book will be measurable on its merits by way of review soon enough. Many people like to be the ones to find the new, exciting authors, the ‘beta’ readers if you like, and they take over from the traditional publishers’ slush pile. By the time a self-published book has reached the top ten in its genre with a hundred or so reviews, you can be certain it’s going to be readable, if not enjoyable. I’ve discovered a few great self-published authors through the Amazon charts (and only rarely been tricked into buying something dismal), so it’s a system that works. It rewards good writing and savvy marketing, but doesn’t penalise an author for not writing mainstream or not being a celebrity.

And the traditional publisher? What do they offer a new author? An editor? Previously unobtainable marketing? Well, yes and no. You’ll get an editor, but whether you get a good one . . . that’s up to the Gods. Traditionally published books aren’t error-free, and they certainly aren’t copy-edited to perfection, either. Pick a new author’s work up and it’ll likely be plump with adverbs, purple prose, head hopping etc, all the things a good editor would fix. And, by the way, a good editor costs a few hundred pounds at most, so big deal.

But the marketing, right? A big publisher will shell out a fair wedge to see your book on the sides of buses, on billboards, perched at the front of the bookshop, right? Nope. It’ll be somewhere at the back of the bookshop, spine out, lost. The books you see in the entrance are the big-hitters, the ones that either a) already proved themselves, or b) are written by someone people already know. As a new author, marketing is your own chore, so suck it up and get promoting.

Basically, what a traditional publisher offers over Amazon is an upfront payment, an advance. This advance is paid back via the author’s book sale royalties, which means they won’t see a penny from royalties until it’s paid off. And the royalties are lower than a Barry White chorus, so don’t expect to see anything beyond the advance. Most new authors never pay the advance back, and often their books net the publisher a loss, so the publisher drops them. Doesn’t matter if the book was good or bad — it dies because no one knew it existed.

With all that said and done, would I accept an offer from a traditional publisher? It would be hard not to. But I’d be going into it with my eyes open at the very least. It’s an accolade in itself, being traditionally published, an affirmation of your abilities, and that’s something all authors worry about. Am I good enough or am I deceived in my thinking? Is my book great, or is it fit only for the roughage in pig swill? Basically, do I have literary dysmorphia?

Traditional publisher or no, I suppose I’ll find out whether or not Vessel is any good as of August the 1st. I’m prepared for a lukewarm response, and I’m not going to let that stop me enjoying writing; it would, however, be nice if people (yourselves included) genuinely enjoyed it. If I’m truly honest, traditional publishing would be great, but it comes in at a way-distant second to the idea of creating a world full of characters and events that people can’t wait to immerse themselves in. Ultimately, that’s what I really want.

Well, I’m finished. It’s done. What a relief. Being an early adopter of the curmudgeonliness ways of the elderly, I’m surprised to find I’m actually feeling quite emotional about it all.

But my literary narcissism can only be short-lived, because now I’ve got to take Vessel to the next stage: publication. With many ‘thanks, but no thanks,’ type responses from agents, I’m going it alone, venturing into the wilderness of the self-published. Many a good author has found success (and even traditional publication) through this route, so I’m not above it. In fact, I’m feeling quite the opposite: that Vessel isn’t worthy of a reader’s attention. Only one way to find out I guess . . .

A book launch is a wondrous thing: it can shoot a book to the stars, or it can leave it to wither and die. Amazon a hugely powerful tool, able to make or break a budding author with its complex algorithms and global reach. A good launch takes advantage of this marketing ability, and I need to make the most of it. Having read Darren Wearmouth’s guide to book launching (you can view it here: http://rockingselfpublishing.com/episode-07-the-7-day-launch-strategy-with-darren-wearmouth/) and discussed it with the man himself, I have come up with a strategy. Darren’s First Activation sold over 50,000 copies in the first few months and his new Critical Dawn is following suit, so the guide is worth reading (as are his books!)

There’s no magic trick to it. It’s based around advertising. That’s how the world works, I suppose. Darren’s guide lists a few advertisers, and we’ve both since discovered more, so here is the list of companies I’m going to use to formulate my launch strategy:

Kindle Nation Daily

Bargain Booksy

Book Sends

Kindle Books and Tips

eReader News Today

BookBub

I’ll arrange the bookings over a week or so, hopefully giving me a continuous boost in the rankings, enough for the Amazon algorithms to take notice and give me more promotion. That’s the idea, anyway. Whether it will work for me is another matter. Once everything is booked and I have a launch date ready, I’ll post it up on here. From there — who knows. We’ll have to wait and see . . .

I touched on editing in a previous blog post, but I thought I’d go into a little more depth this time, summarising the revelations I’ve had through the process and addressing a couple of common misconceptions. The following may be obvious to some, but for me it’s been a case of trial and error (that’s still ongoing). My biggest problem has been accepting the volume of work editing requires; it’s oh so easy to convince yourself that it’s optional and that the raw manuscript is good enough as it is.

It isn’t.

There are, broadly speaking, three types of edit: structural/developmental, line/copy, proofread. The first deals with the big picture, sanding off the protrusions in the plot that trip a reader up. This stage is important. Very important. It’s so important that I’ve told you three times. It’s also the hardest, and the easiest to skip — to a point. I say hardest, when actually what I mean is most daunting. You’ve written your manuscript, poured months of your life into it, and now you need to take a long hard look at it. You know there’s problems — big problems. But changing them is a huge amount of work. Eh, maybe the problems aren’t so big after all. Nah, they’re fine.

No! Stop! That’s the voice of sloth speaking. Ignore it at all costs. Fixing the big problems can be the difference between a three star review and a five, so the time spent cleaning them up is worth it many times over. With Vessel, I have an ending (published in these pages) where the bad guy spills the beans. It’s hackneyed, it’s cliched and it took a lot of fixing. And that’s why I say that the structural/developmental stage is the easiest to skip to a point, because once you start, you can’t stop. If you truly have a story worth writing, and you truly enjoy writing, you will truly enjoy the structural/developmental edit. Why? Because it’s your world, your characters, and you get to learn even more about them. You relive the story in your mind, thinking what if, and when you do, that’s when the fun really starts. So in the case of Vessel I re-wrote the entire ending, and with it came more ideas about the bad guy’s motivations, which in turn lead to a tighter involvement from the protagonist early on and a plot with the added slickness of a greased rat.

This is why this easy-to-skip stage is so important, because it allows you to look over what you’ve done and really get to know it. Think about it: your relationship with the characters is as fleeting as any reader’s after the first draft, and you wouldn’t expect a reader to recall all the details you as a writer need to know to make the story perfect. So you fix the big chunks and the small problems (that you may not even have noticed) fix themselves. And it’s fun, rewarding. It took me a long time to get over that hump and knuckle down, but I’m glad I did. For example, having changed the ending meant that I tweaked another character’s involvement, which lead to an adjustment of a key moment later on, which in turn affected the investment the protagonist had in the whole story. It’s like polishing a dirty window: it seemed fine before, but after it’s a whole new world of clarity and detail.

Next comes the line/copy edit. There’s been a bit of a blur between the developmental edit and the copy edit — that is to say that the smaller character and plot tweaks come under the latter heading. Again it highlights the importance of the the first stage, because approaching the copy edit without thinking about the structure as a whole is like getting into a hot bath with a leap. You ease yourself back into the plot with the developmental edit (having left the manuscript untouched for a few months while working on something else to clear your mind of it first) and then the copy edit becomes a much more comfortable and bearable process.

Further to the refinement of small plot and character details, the copy edit is the opportunity to make the prose flow. Sounds dumb, right? Most people will be reading the book in their heads, so there are no toungue-twisters to trip up on, right? Wrong. Your brain reads just like you read aloud, and if there’s a clunky sentence or an unbelievable string of dialogue, your inner tongue will get just as knotted. So here’s what I do: I read the manuscript aloud. It’s a strange process, but once you get over the sound of your own voice in your ears, you’ll appreciate the value. What hi-fi buffs call PRAT (Pace, Rhythm and Timing) comes into play as much here as it does with poetry and lyrics. Make each sentence flow — it doesn’t have to be a majestic piece of soul-crushing libretto, but it does need to freely move through the brain, and reading it aloud is the best way of spotting the hiccups.

It’s also a great way of spotting fluff. Fluff is the writing that serves no purpose. Think about every line carefully: does it influence the plot? Does it influence the protagonist? If it’s gone, will it make any difference? Be brutal. You may think that simile you’ve devised would have Shakespeare’s knees-a-knocking, but if it serves no purpose other than to show off your literary talent, shoot it. Shoot it dead. This is a novel, not a CV. You may like the way you described the elongated squared plastic tube connecting the frayed off-white string to the dusty blinds, but get over it — no one pays that much attention when they open the blinds. People simply open blinds. Once you get past the horror of snipping away at unnecessary words — even whole sentences — it becomes easier, more refreshing, like cleaning out the attic. You realise that you didn’t need all that junk after all, and now everything looks pleasant and tidy.

The copy edit, for me, is a stage most important for the formation of believable dialogue, and here is where the reading aloud technique pays real dividends: if it sounds stupid coming out of your mouth, well — that’s because it is stupid. Change it. Make it sound like something a person would really say. It can make you cringe to see how robotic your characters really are, spouting nonsense and repeating what others have just said, or just plain iterating points that didn’t need iterating. ‘I’m just going around the back now to the place where I keep my gun next to my lawn mower,’ is a wonderful example of a piece of dialogue trying to do too much. Don’t force it. If you need a nugget of information to be revealed, think of a believable way to do it. Our example shooter here is revealing that the gun is kept next to lawn mower, because we want the reader to realise that he was the lawn-mower killer the whole time — but we don’t want the reader to think that he’s also a blithering idiot that talks like he’s reading a badly written teleprompter. ‘Get my gun.’ ‘Where is it?’ ‘By the lawn mower.’ That’s better.

Last of all is the proofread. This, for me, is the most draining. It’s what I’m on at the moment, and it takes a lot of concentration. It’s also the stage most people believe editing consists entirely of: looking for speeling mistackes and errors from your grammar. The human brain reads ahead, devouring sentences before you’ve consciously got to them, filling the gaps in between. You konw toshe snecentes wtih all the ltretes mlduedd up? You can read them with little difficulty because your brain has already scanned ahead, fixing the mistakes. This also highlights why sorting the rhythm during the copy-edit stage is so important, because the brain can’t fix that and gets stuck when scanning ahead, jarring the reader from the experience.

So far I haven’t really worked out a great way to proofread. I read aloud again, which helps me spot any copy-editing bits I’ve missed, but I skip the little errors with surprising ease. I try to consciously read each word on its own, but it’s hard going and takes a lot of concentration not to slip back into normal reading mode. Fortunately, my partner seems to have an almost eagle-like ability to spot these little boo-boos, so she has been my saving grace in this stage, catching the errors that slip through my brain. That doesn’t stop this bit being supremely boring, though.

The next stage in learning to edit is probably knowing when to stop. A writer’s work is never done, or at least never good enough, and I can’t imagine a read through when I don’t spot something I want to change. I guess for now I’ll have to use my better judgement and, hopefully, with time and experience, I’ll be able to get the feel for when enough’s enough. In any case, Vessel is nearing completion, and with a bit of luck it will be worth the read. Fingers crossed.