I just finished with the 2020 edition of Brandon Sanderson’s creative writing lectures at BYU. Those were about 26 hours of listening and taking notes. I’ve never hit Google Keep’s limit on symbols for a note before, and now I did it twice! The lectures put a lot of things straight for me, and gave me an easy way to think about the structure of my stories that hadn’t occurred to me before. I have now started making revision notes for Soulhazard while waiting for the editor to come back to me.
And that last part is really scary, which was surprising for me. I hadn’t thought about the expectation of an industry professional cutting my stuff into ribbons as something big; I hadn’t really thought about it at all. Needless to say, before I get at least one book out there I’ll be fighting impostor syndrome hard.
But the lectures also gave me a lot of positive emotion. I already see I’ve done some things right. There is a lot to do, but if I stick to being systematic and just forge ahead, it will be over soon. New Year’s Eve seems to be important for that book. I finished it on January 1st 2021, and it feels like I will (or should) be finished editing on the same day next year.
And then there’s the cover. But that story will start in a couple of weeks, so I have enough time to figure out what to do with the story until I have to explain to the artist what I need.
We live in interesting times. I made mine even more so.
Ivan