Practice Makes Practice 3

Hello, readers and writers!

This is Practice Makes Practice, a series of blog posts chronicling my process and projects as an author. I’m Tim Niederriter, author of science fiction, fantasy, and dystopian fiction. But enough about what I try to do. What have I actually been doing this past week?

Just a brief update today. I finished editing the third Pillar Universe novel, Ice War, over the course of the week. Sent it to across the pond for proofreading on Thursday, then got it back super quick, on Friday. That book is now out in ebook, with print to follow in the near future. I am very excited about this book. I think it is by far the best of the three in the series so far.

Read now!

Today I dive into serious writing for book four of the series. This is going to be a bigger book than the prior three, and I’m excited to finally write forward in this story after so long. The goal is to do fifteen-minute sprints for four and a half hours each day. It will be interesting to see how much I can get done with a bundle of time like that.

In brief, editing is done for now. Writing has begun anew.

Thanks for reading.

Check out my amazon store page and read or buy to support my work.

I’ll write again soon, though daily I can’t quite manage on my own. Amy and all support is appreciated.

Write. Read. Review.


Word Works 2

Hi folks. I missed the post yesterday, so take a seat “Moment of Candor…” Time for Word Works.

This time, on Word Works I am going to post a few hundred words from an early rough draft I made a couple months ago. In this case, they are from the very start of the book. See what you make of this, and I’ll be back on the other side to comment on what I reread.

*

Two men, both young, dark-skinned and built like trucks who just decided to act like humans sat in the dingy recesses of a bar as lunch wound down. Gabe, out hero, poked at the sauce-laden foil basket where his chicken wings once lay with his fork. He sighed.
“Thanks for making it over, bro.”
Jax shook his head.
“Sucks it’s so far.”
“How long it take you?”
“More than an hour.”
“Heaven forbid you drive two.”
“Might have been two. I was rocking. Don’t remember when I left.”
“Sure you don’t.” Gabe smirked. He picked up a glass, more water than whiskey now.
“Still sucks and you know it,” Jax said.
“Better than you.” Gabe took a long sip of his water-whiskey.
“Such ingratitude.”
“I said thanks.”
“My ears musta been ringing. I missed it.”
“Thanks, Jax.”
“There you go. I heard that one.”
Gabe swished his glass. All water left. At least it tasted that way.
“You done?” he asked.
Jax shrugged.
“If you are, we can roll.”
“Where else you wanna go?”
“Eh, where else is there? Want another drink?”
“Only if you’re buying.”
“Right, you gotta save. How’s your leg?”
“Feeling fine. Doc says not to strain it though. Could re-injure the tendon or whatever.”
“How much longer.”
“Jax.”
“Gabe, you ain’t seriously out.”
“No. I’m serious. No more football, not for a long-ass time.”
“Now that sucks.”
“Royally.” Gabe took another sip. He spat water into the cup, wishing it tasted more bitter, less sweet.
“How’re you gonna get by? Pay for next term?”
“I’m saving. You know it.”
“As a mechanic? How much can you—”
“I’m doin’ more than shop work.”
“What kinda more?”
“Stuff they need big guys for.”
“Construction?”
“Brother, you never heard of power lifters have ya?”
“Not construction, okay, okay. Then what?”
Gabe’s massive shoulders rose and fell. At six foot eight inches, not many tight ends had been bigger.
Had been.
In the past.
“Don’t worry about it,” Gabe said. “My dad’s old buddy lets me work on his team.”
“Team?”
“Usually its just two of us.”
“You got a partnership with some old dude?”
“He’s not that old.”

*

And that’s the clip. Lots of dialog, I know. I think most readers will notice the staccato of conversation right away. At the very beginning the narrator’s voice intrudes a bit, but mostly this is just two characters talking with very little description.

I don’t normally write this way for a stretch this long, especially at the beginning of the book. A problem I see here is this opening doesn’t do much to say the genre of the book. Yeah… It has a ways to go.

Anyway, let me know what you think of the excerpt, of this post, or anything else that interests you related to my work or posts.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back tomorrow with a Moment of Candor.

To support this blog, check out my books. Ice War is out now, and that’s book three of the Pillar Universe series, so it’s a great time to jump into book one, Storm Fleet. Check it out. And good luck to you, reader.

Craft in Reverse 2

Welcome to Craft in Reverse, a blog series where I take a piece of writing advice and deconstruct it both in the positive and negative.

This week: Write every day.

This is great advice for beginning writers, and can be really useful throughout a writers’ entire lifetime if it suits a given person. For about the first three or four years since I started writing, I followed this rule pretty closely. The results weren’t well-written books (I was new to the craft and a teenager, after all) but I grew a lot in my writing skills. My first big break from writing every day was as a first year student in college. I took a few months break but missed writing enough to come back and deliver the goods with some of the biggest individual writing days I’ve ever had, though I didn’t go back to writing every day.

Breaking the every day habit was an early step toward my personal move toward less relaxed writing, a very negative path I’m trying to leave to this day. For a month or so I’ve tried to write some kind of fiction every day, in addition to the editing my current series, but not in the numbers I want. Starting this week or next I want to try writing more substantially every day to start building the habit again.

So, what are the pitfalls of the advice?

First of all, not everyone has the disposition to write every day. Some writers (Such as Eric Flint and Nathan Lowell) are binge writers, who power through books then take a break from writing for some period of time. I’ve experimented with this approach as well (Though I find it more satisfying to keep the breaks to a minimum, personally). As long as the writing gets done to the writer’s satisfaction, how often they put words down may no matter so much. Like all writing advice, this tip can become dogma, and dogma is dangerous in every form and arena.

So write every day to get used to writing. Or don’t. As with all advice, it’s up to each writer, individually.

Thanks for reading.

You can support me by getting my fiction at Amazon.com.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FSZ8SQC

Practice Makes Practice

Hello, readers!

This is Practice Makes Practice, where I discuss my recent writing successes and challenges each week.

Over the past week I have mainly been editing, following revving up to fix issues with the third Pillar Universe book, Ice War. This is the final part of the original story I wrote a few years back. The series begins with Storm Fleet, continues in Flame Wind, and continues further but won’t fully conclude in Ice War. It’s been a fun series to edit, but after this book is done and out I will engage in writing book four and those that come after it.

The thing I’m struck by in this editing process is how much I love these books as I reread them. I paid a lot of attention to detail in the initial writing and it shows, even in a rough draft mired in passive voice. I’m beginning to feel like a pro at fixing passive voice. In fact, rephrasing to create strong sentence is the most fun I have actually changing things in the story.

For the writers out there, I have one small piece of advice, and I know it’s difficult to follow, but if possible: Don’t hate on editing. You can do anything you want in a story. You can make it make sense in edits in addition to all the other wonderful writerly things you can do at this point in the process. If you asked me the question of if I prefer writing or editing, I’d say they’re really the same thing, just with different emphasis. I like, even love them both, when I’m at my best, even if the book is not always great straight out of rough draft.

Speaking of writing, however, I have another novel to dive into now that my editing quota for the day is complete. I want to get to that, and there really isn’t much to add about my practice for this and last week. Thanks for reading.

If you want to support this blog, check out my amazon store. https://www.amazon.com/Tim-Niederriter/e/B00RO8K52Y

FLame Wind – Available now: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07N14ZF9Y/https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07N14ZF9Y/