Woven Magic Sample Chapter

I've been burping butterflies in anticipation of sharing my writing. Thank you in advance for taking a look. Please let me know what you think. I'd appreciate any criticisms.

Thank you to everyone who read and commented on my chapter. As it has been rewritten, multiple times, since I posted it I am removing this old version for now.

Novel Synopsis and Facebook Page

It is sad after all the work I put into my novel if my synopsis on the back of the book isn't any good probably no one will read it. Which is why I have been laboring over my short synopsis for this past week. I'm not sure how it's turning out as I've redone and reread it so many times I had to take a brain break. I could no longer tell what was wrong with it. I've posted it below, please let me know what you think. I appreciate criticism.

I'm feeling a bit of stage fright posting my first chapter tomorrow. It's only 3 pages, but since it's the first three pages it has been through the most versions and has certainly been the most work.

I finally came up with a title for my novel, Woven Magic, from the way magic works for my character. I thought of it when I was on vacation and away from a computer. I went nuts worrying that Woven Magic was taken until I could get to google. Fortunately, my title wasn't taken. I was so happy I went and reserved it on Facebook. I scanned in the sketches I did a while back to help me describe my characters and colored them for the page. It took far longer than anticipated, but doesn't everything?
https://www.facebook.com/wovenmagic

Woven Magic Synopsis:

Ten years ago the shift occurred. For one day the Earth was merged with another world and strange sword-wielding people were everywhere. Afterwards everything went back to normal, except several million humans wound up on the other world. In this new world technology fails, but magic is real.

Altera is a human girl who has a unique magic gift. She doesn't know how to control her magic yet and whenever she tries things go badly. Magically defending her village from brigands causes her to be cast out by her friends and neighbors in fear of her power. She thinks learning magic will solve all her problems, little does she know it is just the start of them. Altera is going to be more crucial to the future of this world than she could ever have dreamed.

Mage Jyk is a Kuth, a native of the world of magic. He has taken on the unique and unwanted job of being a regional mage. Taking care of anything illegal involving magic is the job of the regional mage. It is always an adventure, but nothing ever goes smoothly.

Regional mages usually don't take apprentices due to the dangerous nature of their work, but Jyk has agreed to take Altera on as his apprentice. Altera tries to prove herself and in the process reveals she has special skills even Jyk has never seen before.

Guide to Getting Your Book Published

My sister gave me the book, The Essential Guide to Getting your Book Published, as a gift last week when I went to visit her. So far it looks promising, it’s well written containing witty stories from fellow authors. It’s certainly not the boring how to book I expected. I've made it through page 60 just past the social networking chapter, ironic. I know how much work it is to get published, this has let me know how much more work it will be.

I was afraid to post chapters from my book. I thought that if my book was available online for free it might turn publishers off, but this book quashed my fears. Apparently it can only help to promote your work.

That’s good news for anyone who’s been curious. I’m going to reread the beginning of my book and post a sample chapter next Wednesday.

 

The Essential Guide to Getting your Book Published By Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Guide-Getting-Your-Published/dp/076116085X/

Vacation

My romantic notions of writing on the beach were quashed by reality. My notebook got wet and sandy, so I chucked it in my beach bag and played in the surf.

I actually did accomplish quite a bit of editing. The first 24 thousand words are finally done, which were my hardest to write and to edit. It is now speeding along and I'm almost a third done.

Printed Copy

I got the printed copy of my book today! For some reason that makes it all the more real. 

For better or worse it's true what they say, I have noticed more errors on the printed copy than I did reading it on my computer screen.

It was much thicker than I expected. It's only 150 pages (300 pages front and back), since I couldn't afford to get it printed double spaced. I'm happy that it still looks impressively thick. 

I'm off to the beach to read it next week. 

Editing

I have been Googling how to edit a novel. Most of the editing articles I've read have been useless. Some of them I questioned how good the writer could be if their articles were so dull. I did read a good one though that explained some common writing mistakes. It's coming in quite handy. 

http://litreactor.com/columns/8-words-to-seek-and-destroy-in-your-writing

I don't recommend eliminating all of a word, just the ones that are unnecessary. Sometimes the sentence makes perfect sense without the word in question or even sounds better without it.

I particularly liked how the author explained suddenly. If you tell your readers that something suddenly happens you are warning them and then it comes off as less sudden. It took me quite a while to fix this one issue. Editing is proving far more difficult than I anticipated. 

Another good site recommended to me by my sister is 

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl

She explains the dangling particle quite well which is what the 8 words author was getting at in his IS portion.

Writing Pace

I was looking back to see how quickly I wrote my novel. All but the first 24 thousand words were written in the last 17 days. I think this shows that starting to write is the most difficult part. It proves that you should keep at it. It will get easier once you get going and get used to writing.

I’d also like to note that my ideas were coming out so quickly at that stage that I probably have a lot of editing to do. Certainly proofreading those beginning 24 thousand words has proved difficult. 

I am mostly changing the way my character told the story because she has changed along the way, the sort of character she is, not developing her character. I have also found more than a few good ideas I had that I didn’t follow through with. I created a separate file for continuity, writing these ideas down along with my continuity errors, so I can try to work them into the later parts of my story.

Wordle

Wordle of my entire story.

I did a wordle when I was part way through and realized I had a giant JUST in the middle. I took out 100 just and paid attention to it from then on. Now I’m thinking LIKE is far too large, going to have to fix that next.

My First Book

Wednesday, July 24th, 2013 at 2:04 pm

I officially finished my first novel! Well, the rough rough draft of my first novel anyway. I started this book three months ago. At first I had to force myself to write and by the end that’s all I wanted to do.