How Much is Enough

I've been revising the last few weeks.  This is work and not fun.  I find it hard.  I've had some good advice and that is driving much of this revision.  The book was reasonably coherent before, but I think it is more coherent now.  How much revision is enough?  When should I stop?

My idea was to have a good review from someone who clearly knows more about what make a good book than I do, then I would update.  After this major update I would do one more tour and it would be over.  But I think and think and think and it seems that aftere every tour, the book could still be bettter.  So why stop?

The problem is that this is my first book.  The more you write the better you get.  Also I get advice, I read books on the subject, I consider pod casts from authors and teachers.  When you are filling the barrel with knowledge, you do get better (and quickly), but yesterday's work soon seems to be dull and amateurish.  

But eventually I have to stop, so I ask when is it enough?

I set an arbitrary deadline for finishing the book as before Christmas 2025.  Not because I think that at that time it will be as good as I can make it, but because I have other writing projects that I have put on hold and life is short.

So will the book be as good as I can make it?  Not likely, but it is a lot better today than it was two months ago.  The Tick Tock man controls me (as always).

The Only Joy is the Joy of Duty

After an excellent review of my up coming novel, Memories of Yuggoth, that Lee Freitag graciously provided, I have been very busy trying to improve the book.  His comments have inspired some new ideas and twists and I am hopefull my revised version will align with his expectations.  The book itself, after working on it for more than two years, is a much bigger job than I ever thought it would be.  But I assure you, it is a labor of love and I am anxious to get working on my next one.  Even though it is only of medium length a major review and update the the text is a significant task.  I am working very hard to ensure that is will be ready before Christman (dare I say 2025).

I'm not sure how others work, but I have reread, revised and corrected the entire book at least eight times (and it might still suck).  I consider this the final revision.  Once it is done I plan to do one more reading and it will good to go (or not).

I'm also starting to play around with some cover art (and I am in no way an artist). I am using an AI image generator and a bit of hacking with an image editor to try and get something that is not too awful.  Here is my latest try (but the final version might be totally different).  Keep tuned.

So, as the red lectroids say, The only joy is the joy of duty. Work... work... work... Keep your nose to the grindstone.  So I will keep working... until next time.
 

Welcome to Spirits of Yuggoth

You might be wondering about the purpose of Spirits of Yuggoth and how it came to be.  First, for me, the true spirit of Yuggoth is that feeling of wonder that I had when I read H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Out of Time for the first time. The world that Lovecraft builds is a coherent and universal view of the past, present and future of our world, the universe and other nether regions adjacent to our own.  As such, it provides us with a vast playground for speculation where we might find both the wonderful and the horrific.

When my oldest son challenged me to write a horror novel while we were discussing some of the things I did with role playing games in my youth and what I would be doing once I started to wind down my work and retire, the conversation inspired me to start thinking about writing.  I had done a lot of technical writing during my long years as a software developer, but it had been years since I wrote anything vaguely resembling fiction.  After some reflection, I decided, as an exercise, that I would write a horror novel.

You're probably thinking that this was crazy and perhaps presumptuous. After all, writing a novel is work.  It is very hard work that requires rigor and perseverance.  It also requires inspiration and imagination.  After years of technical work, rigor and perseverance are something that I have learned, but inspiration and imagination is another story.  I am less convinced about that aspect, but now it's too late.

I hope to release my first book, Memories of Yuggoth before Christmas 2025.  I will be talking about that book here, but also of the other projects that I am working on.  The first book was an interesting learning experience.  I am not an author and I am not literary, but I am something of a storyteller and I hope that will be enough to ensure this is not a disaster.

So spirits of Yuggoth are those Lovecraftian notions that spiral around our heads, traversing the nether regions and haunting us like ghosts.

More to come.