Dispatches From the Critic Traverse

I climb from the valley to traverse the tenuous ledge of community feedback…

Photo by Benjamín Gremler on Unsplash

Dispatches

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• [Previous] Dispatches From Editing Valley: Revision & More Revision

Entry #4 in my ‘Dispatches’ series of updates on personal writing projects.

So, It’s Done

On November 22, 2022, I put the first line down on paper:

“You can’t — do thi — ”

And as of November 17th, 2023, that line still opened my epic fantasy WIP, Coalescence, nearly unchanged. Aside from the 415 other pages, countless other lines, three character POVs, and a magical encounter with a very dangerous rock that had been added right on top of it.

Plus just a liiiiiitle bit of temporary cover art and a recolored map, which just makes me happy to have:

Temporary cover art (AI background, I know, I know…plus title design by yours truly)

Not sure what to call the opening/teaser line on the left. On the right is the map that started it all — needs another pass, and maybe even to be rebuilt from the ground up, but I just got it down to black and white for inclusion in this draft.

Technically, I think this book is in its third draft, plus a very quick proofread. That tracks pretty well with the process of writing my first novel — three drafts finished in under a year, one of them through a physical pen-and-paper editing pass, and draft number three is the first time that it feels polished enough to share.

But that’s where the similarities stop.

With my first novel, ‘sharing’ that finished draft meant emailing it over to a family member and two friends/writing partners from college, as well as my girlfriend.

Now, things are totally different. She’s not my girlfriend. She’s my wife.

On top of that, I’ve begun the foreign, awkward, complicated process of getting actual, intentional feedback from folks who aren’t just family or friends. I’ve mainly been using the platform Critique Match*. It’s taken a bit of time to get up and running, but after many back-and-forths, it feels like I’ve found one or two folks who really get the gist of the work and can provide some instrumental insight into how it reads.

*As a side note, I’d love to do a little feature on the tools that have helped me get this draft going, so I’ll look for a Medium pub that’d be a good home for that— if none are available, I’ll post it as the next in this line of personal updates.

Their insight has been truly helpful. Way more helpful than I originally anticipated.

After a year in a draft as dense — in a world as complex — as the one I’ve put together for Coalescence, editing feels like palm reading when your hand is a centimeter from your face: the thing is completely out of focus, way too close for comfort, inscrutable.

Maybe, if WIPs like this keep forcing their way into my life, that late-stage editing process will get a little easier to handle on my own, but for now, I desperately needed someone to step in and tell me what’s what.

Draft #4 isn’t fully underway (since I’m shifting gears to helping my critique partners out with their own work, posting stuff like this on Medium, continuing the lit. journal submission slog, and beginning work on Coalescence’s sequel…) but I’ll probably pick that up as soon as my writing schedule opens up over the next month or two.

Or as soon as I can get my palm just a bit further away from my face for a decent reading.

Once my writing to-do list has calmed down a little bit, I’ll be back to more regularly scheduled programming here (cultural commentary, film criticism, etc.), but in any event, I’ll do my best to keep to my self-imposed bimonthly posting schedule.

If you got this far, thanks for joining along for the ride :)