Concerning How I Wrote The Nine Realms

Every writer has a different behind-the-scenes story. Before memory softens away the rough edges, I’d better write it down.

As the King says in Through the Looking Glass, “The horror of that moment . . . I shall never forget!”
“You will, though,” the Queen said, “if you don’t make a memorandum of it.”

The first drafts: 

I started writing in the summer of 2013. I outlined nothing; I didn’t know I needed to world build first. I just took my laptop everywhere I went—scenes and characters came to life while waiting in the dentist’s office or when I couldn’t sleep. I spent the year (I had a sabbatical leave) in an imaginative haze, with only one foot in IRL. 

My general habit is to write from 6 a.m. until I run out of steam (usually around noon) every day other responsibilities don’t intrude.

By the fall of 2015 I had drafted the entire series of four books but I knew I needed expert help to improve. 

Moving toward publishing:

I was such a rube I didn’t even know the term “query letter,” but I was fortunate (actually, privileged) to have access—through friends and work connections—to professionals who patiently set a newbie on the proper path.

In November of 2015 I sent out about a dozen query letters, getting just enough requests for sample pages not to feel crushed. To reassure myself that I was on the right track, I hired a professional editor to critique my first 50 pages. Then I revised all four books again. After crumpling up an insane number of drafts of a query letter, I gathered up my courage and approached agents again in the late summer of 2016. 

For a heady two weeks around Labor Day 2016 I had two agents vying for me to sign with them. My choice, Martha Milliard of Sterling Lord Literistic, managed to interest Tor Books in the series, but the press wanted to be certain I willing and able to make changes. I auditioned by reworking a few chapters according to their guidelines. Tor offered me a contract in the winter of 2017.

 Revisions, more revisions, and yet more revisions:

My editor, Jen Gunnels, now supervised my rewriting the books all over again. Books I and II needed more work (primarily cutting excess threads, trimming the interior monologue, and researching topics I had fudged my way through), while by the later books I had hit my stride.

Simultaneously, instead of relying on the kindness of friends and relatives as beta readers, I found another fantasy writer to serve as my writing partner, and we critiqued every paragraph of one another’s manuscripts. 

 From August to October 2018 I reworked the whole series again, concentrating particularly on character dialogue and on world building touches. 

After initially drafting and redrafting in Microsoft Word, in the winter of 2017 I bought the writing software Scrivener. The “writing history” panel of a random chapter shows that I changed it 67 times.

The four books are now off for copy-editing, and then I’ll have one last chance to approve changes and make final tweaks.