Chapter 17
Grayson
It’s time for a Wordsmith meeting.
Ever since Me and Colton approached Mike about starting this thing called the Wordsmiths, we’ve had pretty regular meetings. It’s not a scheduled thing, exactly, we all have busy lives, but we do it regularly. A lot of times groups like ours can start off strong but fizzle out. It’s easy to get caught up in our own work, or our personal drama, and neglect the readers that brought us whatever success we’ve had. None of us want to let that happen, me especially. I need this group as much as the group needs me. The membership in our Wordsmith Facebook group has been growing every single day, and with more new readers comes the responsibility of being present, doing giveaways, interacting, and putting out great content.
This time we’re doing the meeting at my place. I made Rowan breakfast earlier—it was time to return to the favor, even though mine didn’t look, smell, or taste as good as the one she made me at my uncle’s place. She loved the surprise though. I had to clean up all the stuff from the pasta we didn’t make last night before I cooked breakfast, but I didn’t mind. What we did last last night was ten times the experience of making dinner, so I’m more than happy to do a little clean up. After breakfast Rowan headed out, and we made plans for later in the week. I’m so happy how everything went. I was so insecure about us, and I wasn’t even sure what I wanted from the situation, but now I have no doubts whatsoever.
Before she left we talked about my new story.
“So what’s it about, exactly? Can you talk about that?”
“I can with you,” I told her. “And it’s about a woman who’s in a bad situation, but she meets a mysterious man who lives in the same building who’s always had his eyes on her. That’s all I know right now, I’m still working on it.”
“That sounds like it’ll be interesting. Where did you get the idea for it?”
I shrugged. “Just came to me. I’m not sure. Just popped into my head from the idea multiverse I guess.” I laughed because I never know how to answer that one. “But I don’t question it any more. Now it’s becoming a real story, and I think it’ll be sexy and inspirational at the same time when I’m done.”
“That’s great,” she told me. “It sounds like it’ll be amazing, but more than that I’m just happy that you’re happy and writing. If that’s happening then the rest will fall into place.”
She was right about that. Like I said, the ideas are currency, and once I have one the rest works itself out. The rest is just the process. “Yeah, I’m happy with how it’s going, but I have no idea how it’ll turn out.”
“That’s weird.” She said.
“What?”
“I thought writers knew the whole story before they wrote.”
“Some do, for sure. Some start with the end. Some even map out the entire story first and then just write it, but that’s never been my style. I find out what’s happening as my characters go through it.” I sound like one of those authors right now —the ones that go on and on about their characters as though they’re real people, but sometimes they seem like that. It’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t write.
“Then you just start writing, and just see where it goes?”
“Basically, yeah,” I told her. “It’s difficult to articulate, but there’s something that happens to my brain when I write. The more I do it the more ideas I have for where the story needs to go, or what’s going to happen to certain characters. I can’t get all that by sitting and thinking about it. For me it comes through writing itself.”
“That’s really interesting. I love hearing about this stuff. Writing and writers fascinate me. Maybe that’s just because I can’t do it myself.”
“Have you ever tried?” She shook her head. “Do you want to write?” I asked.
“Actually, yes, I’ve wanted to for a while. Maybe not romance, but something. I’m not sure what, but it’s always been a dream of mine. My parents just thought that the idea of being a writer was stupid, like me telling them I wanted to join the circus or be in a band for a living. They’re old school immigrants, you know? They want their kids to have a college degree and a respectable job.”
“I get that, but you’re a grown woman now, and your parents can’t dictate your life. You can have your degree and your job, but you should write if you want to write. Even just to give it a try. Whether you ever publish or not you should always follow your dreams. You never know where they might lead you.”
We talked some more over breakfast, mostly with Rowan asking me a whole laundry list of questions she had regarding writing and publishing. I think my encouragement sparked her interest even more, and she wanted to know how the whole thing actually worked. “So, do you have an editor?”
“I do,” I told her. “Well, I should say I did have an editor, but I’m on the prowl as we speak.”
“What happened to the other one?”
“Too many mistakes left in the book. It was a mess. So I needed to find someone who could catch everything. I’ve been reaching out to some of my readers who always catch mistakes in the ARC process.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s advanced reader copy, right?”
“Yup, you got it! Anyway, I reached out to see if someone could help me out with editing my latest, even if they didn’t do it for a living or own an editing business. I got a few responses and I’m talking to them now.”
“I can always take a look for you if you wanted.”
“You’ve helped enough. You helped inspire. You helped encourage. And I know once the book is out you’ll help be my cheerleader and pimp the book out.”
“Hell yeah I will!”
“So don’t worry about editing. It’s the shit work of the book world. I don’t envy editors at all. They have to go through an fifty to eighty thousand word manuscript and look for every little mistaken comma, misspelling, or inconsistencies in the text. It’s hard work.”
“Yeah, I’ll let you know if I catch any big things when I read, but that sounds like a lot.”
“It is,” I told her. “But it’s also one of the most important parts of the process—maybe the most important part after writing a good story.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because mistakes—even if they’re not your fault, make a book look unprofessional. If you read 79, 995 perfect words, but found five really bad type-o’s, what would you think?”
“That the author didn’t have the book edited.”
“Exactly. And that comes up in reviews, or just in people’s perception of you. It’s no good, so having a good editor is essential.”
“So you think you’re going to be able to find one?”
“I hope so,” I told her. “Like I said I’m talking to a few readers on FB now to see if any can do it. I’ll let you know.”
After we finished breakfast Rowan left and I went to the gym to get a workout in before the guys showed up. I told them three o’clock at my place, and to bring something to eat because I’d be starving and I have no food at my place that isn’t a leftover from who-knows-when.
Around three the guys arrive, and I can smell the pizza before I even see Colton walking in behind Mike holding the box. “Who wants a fresh grandma pie, right out of the oven?” Colton’s yelling doesn’t even bother. The smell is overwhelming. I raise my hand and grab a few beers from the fridge. We sit in my living room and get right down to business. Mike speaks first.
“I want to do another signing.” He practically blurts out. Colt and I look at him. “Just us, and whoever else we can get. Maybe G or North, whoever. But the focus will be us.”
“Okay,” Colton says. He obviously didn’t know about this before walking in the door because he sounds really surprised. “When? And. . .why now?”
“I think we need to strike while the iron is hot. Use it not only to satisfy our existing fan base, but to bring new readers also. I’m good friends with a guy who has a space we can use. I say we make the tickets super cheap, and readers have to ‘invite a friend’ —this way everyone shows up and they bring new people with them at a cost of zero. And why now? That’s what I wanted to talk about, actually. We should never do a signing without cool new content to bring to the readers. Last signing it was the anthology, and our first one was just a new experience, so we got people there with that. It’s time to step up our game.”
“You mean with the book we’re co-writing?” I ask.
“Exactly. What I want to do today, if it’s okay with you guys, is to catch up on where we are with all of our stuff. I want to get that out so we can see what a reasonable timeline is for the signing so that we have new books to sign.”
Colton jumps right in. “I’m around the 60,000 word mark for the last book in my MMA series. Should be done with the first draft in a week, then I’ll be on to my part of the book. We need to discuss that whole thing again in detail.”
“Agreed.” I say.
“Okay, so here’s what I was thinking with the book. We put Brody on the cover of the anthology, so we’re not going to use him again for this. We all in agreement on that?” We all nod. “Colt, you have a foot in the modeling world.”
“Well, sort of.” He says. “I’m tight with G, though. I’ll talk to him and see who’s popular right now besides Brody. Getting an image is no problem. Want me to run point on that like I did with the anthology?”
“If you wouldn’t mind, and if Gray agrees.”
“Yeah, I’m down. You did a great job last time. The anthology is still selling really well.”
“No problem,” Colt says. “I can have something for you guys to look at by week’s end. I just need to finish my book, but when I get sick of hammering away at the keyboard I’ll scroll through G’s pics.”
What Colton is saying is so true. Authors have million micro-tasks that we have to do to actually get a book published. Mostly we do things like scrolling through images when we need a break from all the writing. “Good idea. Now, how are we organizing the actual writing, and what’s our timeline.”
Mike seems to have most of this worked out, which is actually good for the group. We’re pretty good at letting different people in the group take charge when it’s needed. We’re not jockeying for position or letting our egos run wild. We work well together, and right now Mike is at the helm. “Here’s what I’m thinking. I write the first part, Colton writes the second, and Gray, you write the last third. I’m done with my new one.”
“Holy shit, Mike, congrats!”
“Yeah,” I second. “That’s awesome. Is it getting picked up by any of the companies you shopped it to?”
“Too soon to tell. My agent is still working to get it picked up. I’m not going to self-publish until I get rejected by everyone. But I have another book of short stories I never published that I have just waiting to be formatted, cover and all. I can bring that to the signing. But my point is that I’m ready to start something new. Colt’s almost done so he can start after I’m done with mine. Then you can finish it. Easy.”
Mike’s being sarcastic. Working well together in a business sense is one thing, but collaborating on a single book is something else entirely. We all have different styles of writing, different work habits, and I’m not sure how this is going work. “How’s that gonna go, Mike? And just to preface, I love the idea, but I want to understand the mechanics better.”
“Just to be efficient, I think we should agree on a story and a plot. I know not everyone does storyboarding like I do, but in this case we might have to.”
“So, what then?” Colt asks. “We lay out the whole story, and then we can each write our own parts?”
“Exactly?”
I was telling the truth when I said I love the idea of this, but I hate the idea of storyboarding. Funny that I was just talking to Rowan about this. I take a deep sigh. Mike knows why.
“I know you don’t like doing that, Gray. But I think a temporary sacrifice for the greater good of the book might be necessary here. We can all write our own books the way we want to, but the only way this one is going to work efficiently is if we write at the same time. And the only way to do that is to know which parts we’re writing ahead of time.”
“Right.”
“Look, this doesn’t have to mean limiting your creativity at all. When I say ‘outline’ I mean major things—you can still take the story to wherever you want it go. And look on the bright side, Gray, you get to close the show and end the entire thing.”
“I think it’s a cool idea, Mike.” Colton says. “But we have to be opened minded when we lay out the story. We can’t all just try to fight for the type of story we’d write in our own books. We should agree up front as to the basic plot and concept, then we can lay the book out into three parts, basically.”
“Then why don’t we do that?”
We each start chowing down on a slice of the grandma pie and work out the basics of the plot. I It comes together quickly and we’re all satisfied with it by the time we’ve finished the pizza and beers. I started off pretty skeptical, but now seeing what each of our parts are going to be I’m actually excited. This way I can work on my book and this on simultaneously.
“That works for me.” I tell Mike.
“Good.”
“Yeah, Mike, me too. I think we’re good. Now we just have to do the damn thing.”
“I think a Google Doc would work best because we can edit it and see other people’s edits and comments as we go. I’ll start it tonight and write as fast as I can.”
“That works,” I say. “That way we can see the progression of the story, maybe even take ideas as it goes.”
“I like it.” Colt says. We’re all in agreement. Now we just have to execute.
“And what about the signing then? What’s our timeframe for all of this?”
Mike thinks about it for a second. “I have to talk to my friend to see when the space is available in the city, but I’m thinking two months. How does that sound? It gives us a few weeks to finish what we’re all working on, and then a few weeks to finish this. The faster we work the better. Then we just have to have it edited and the sooner we can get that cover image the better.”
“I’m on it tonight,” Colt says. “I can have a few choices in a couple of days. And we can use your editor, Mike? She’s good.”
“Done. I’ll schedule with her tonight. And like I said, I’ll start the story today or tomorrow, but you guys don’t have to wait for me. When you finish up whatever you’re going you can get after this. When do you guys want to announce it?”
“How about we tease them a little for the rest of this week?” I suggest. “Tell them we have big news but we won’t say what it is. Then maybe next week we get a banner made and drop the news of the book and the signing.”
“You know what?” Colton asks. “If we’re going to do that we should do the signing news and a cover reveal at the same time. Mike, why don’t you get working on a blurb since we already know the storyline. I’ll put my book aside for a day and find an image. I’ll call G right after we leave here. Shit, I’ll call him from your couch if you’d like.”
“Perfect,” Mike says. “I’ll work on blurb tonight after we’re done here and contact editor. Colton will do his thing with the image. And Gray, maybe you can start yours also?”
“For sure. I can do that.”
“I’m excited about all this!” Mike says.
“Me too.”
“Me three.”
“And, more importantly, I think that the readers will be also.”
I’m excited, too, but I’m always hesitant. I just started getting back into my own book—I really hope that this little project is something that I can do. The last thing I want to do is let the guys down again. I don’t want to drag my heels or bring the whole thing down. I remind myself of Rowan’s words and take a deep breath.
I can do this.
I know I can.