Rhino Puzzlings

We were discussing the "one day novel" in our informal writer's group meeting this week, as in "one day, I'll write a novel." Looking back, I've overcome a lot of personal one-day bucket list items: One day, I'll clean up that draft and send it to beta readers One day, I'll incorporate those comments back into the draft One day, I'll proofread it One day, I'll publish another ebook One day, I'll learn how to typeset One day, I'll learn this drawing software One day, I'll set up the author web site and blog (hi!) One day, I'll go back to social media   One day, I'll do a public reading  One day, I'll find a reader It's good to take inventory now and then, to realize how many one-days are done. It's hard, sometimes, when we see all the steps ahead of us to realize that the only way we have this new view is by taking steps to reach it. Yes, there's another mountain again, but don't lose sight of the ...

📕 After literal months of writing, reading, re-writing, re-reading, hounding beta readers, finding typos, wrestling with cover art, learning typesetting  and all the other tiny fussy bits, I pulled the trigger and ordered a printed proof of @TheRealJoyG and this week, it arrived! View this post on Instagram A post shared by Michael P. Clemens (@mpclemens.writes) So far, I've just handed it to people and said "look through this and tell me that it looks like a real book to you." I'll obsessively hunt for typos another day, but for now, I'm just enjoying the heft of this simple thing, this proof-of-work and a delightfully human analogue artifact. It's going on place of pride on the writing shelf for sure. 🧩🦏

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a typo will lurk in your work until it's time to share it. I swear I've read and re-read The Fall and Rise numerous times, but I swear these typos have been dormant until the typesetting finish line wobbled into view. Right when I needed an accurate page count, and my "the the" repetitions and bizarre grammatical hiccups came out of hiding. I'm making surgical strikes in the text to fix these up before shipping off the manuscript to various print-on-demand distributors. At least I'm keeping myself amused with the novelty and variety of weirdness. No slop here! These are 100% handmade goofs.  In other news,  Trouble  will be heading out to beta readers soon, once I finish awkwardly approaching people about it. My first reader is mercifully finding all the weirder turns of phrase in that one ("did you mean to leave out a verb here?") and making sure the story hangs together. Watch this space for details. Oh...

That's the state of things here: perpetual learning. Writing is a discovery process, and some of my best writing moments have some in the place of  pleasant unexpected surprises , when a character reveals themselves or a plot point unfolds unplanned, and we're off and romping after the next energy of the story. It's certainly possible for me to plan a story to death, and it's my nature to adhere rigidly to a plan if I've made on. Writing demands more flexibility, though, and I like the experience of that flex, the bending of rules and the discovery of the unexpected that comes from the bending. Book design is a whole other beast. I've tried my hand at covers , trying to keep both my limited budget and more limited skills in mind. They're good enough for what I need them to be. Book  interiors  are another world. I happen to have a copy of someone's self-published novel, which I won't name here, but it illustrates the expectations that we have as read...