October 2020
Hey there, happy Halloween!
I’m excited to be wrapping up the third draft of Blake Jordan #7. In another week, I’ll be sending the manuscript to my editor and should have it back a week after that.
This is a story I’ve really enjoyed writing. Its had its ups and its downs, but everything came together in the end and I think it’s the best story in the series yet.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever written about the process of bringing you a new book. A lot of readers think they come easily. I just write them and put them out, ready to be read.
But the truth is, there are a lot of people involved in bringing you a new Jordan novel.
The first thing I do is brainstorm an idea and meet with my developmental editor. She’s out in LA and is a screenwriter by trade. I’ve always believed if you want to write a good story, don’t study books on writing novels, study books on how to write movies. While I love TV series like 24 and Jack Ryan, my books are written so they could be movies. So I pitch my idea to her and she takes it all in and then asks a lot of really good questions. What if the bad guy is really the good guy? What if the good guy is bad? Because she’s written and watched countless movies, she’s great at mixing and matching lots of twists and turns and story beats for me to consider. But ultimately, I have to then decide if I will use any of her ideas. Most of the time I stick with my own. It’s still helpful to bounce my thoughts off of someone who understands story structure.
Then I have to write the thing, obviously. That is difficult. Even seven books in. If I’m honest, I think it’s because I always feel like I need to outdo myself. And certainly, I want to continually improve as a writer, but I need to realize that all I need to do is just keep hitting singles. I don’t need to swing for the fences. Although I still do, every time.
Then I have my cover designer create a new cover for the book. I love my cover guy. He used to design covers for Stephen King back in the day. His covers are the BEST!
While that’s being designed, after I write the first draft, I’ll go in and write a second draft… then I print it out and write a third draft. It’s always amazing to me how many mistakes you will find, bad grammar, sometimes missing words, if you look at your work printed out. I learned this tip early on and it’s helped me become a better writer.
Then I give that third draft, with my handwritten changes in red ink, to my wife, Missy. My first reader. She’s AMAZING! She finds so many things I never saw, even with the manuscript printed out. She writes her feedback in purple ink and I’m always amazed at the things she finds and the problems I need to correct, and if I do my job right, she may add a “wow!!!” or a smiley face. Those are my favorite things to find in purple ink.
Then I take that third draft, with both my changes in red and hers in purple, and I write the fourth draft. I then go through what I call “Peg’s list” which is a lot of grammatical things I need to watch out for and fix based on feedback from my friend Peggy and I make those changes and I send the manuscript to my proofreader who is also great. She makes the books come to life. She doesn’t change the words themselves, per se, but she does find so many additional things that could be punctuated differently to make the book a better read. The goal is to put the reader in a sort of trance, to transport them as they read. I try to give her the best possible book I can… so instead of making a bad book good, hopefully she can make a good book great. When I get her changes back about five days later, I review every one and I accept most of them.
Then and only then is the book is ready for you to read and enjoy.
This isn’t just the way I write. This is the way most professional writers write books.
Sometimes I think about that whenever I read a good book… how so many people were involved from start to finish. But the truth is, nobody should be thinking that when reading. A good book should suck the reader in and transport them to another place and time and keep them turning the pages late into the night. It should take them on an adventure. One they don’t want to end as they draw closer to the story’s final chapters.
I know if I do my job right, it’ll be a wild ride.
Be on the lookout for the cover reveal in the next few weeks.
I hope to have Blake Jordan #7 out before the November newsletter. -Ken