People who know me best are apt to describe me as hardworking, driven, competitive, (and a few spicier things, no doubt.) That’s understandable. I’ve spent my life building and running organizations in the highly competitive, often hostile environment where nonprofits roam. It’s a world whose essence could be summed up as “Endless demand meets inadequate resources.”
I call this website Chapter One because it represents a new beginning for me now that I’ve mostly left that world behind. Writing fiction is the most complex, difficult, and often- frustrating endeavor I have ever undertaken, but I have only myself to blame, because for as long as I can remember, I have been a writer.
Through this newsletter I plan to share my writing journey as it unfolds. Full disclosure, I’m not starting from a blank page. I have a 75,000-word manuscript, working title The Spy Who Came Home, which I have revised – without exaggeration – at least a hundred times. Here’s how it goes: I finish a revision, weighing and tweaking every word, comma, sentence, scene, and chapter, start to finish. I usually think it is pretty good, but then, inevitably, I decide it needs “one last pass.” This leads me to find even more places I can tweak, expand, delete, and hopefully improve. The cycle is endless.
To break through, I recently engaged a developmental editor, Josh Brigham,
who was enormously helpful. I’m now working my way through his suggestions, which involves a lot of sometimes painful work. Still, the process of writing is, well enjoyable might not be the right word, but engrossing, immersive, and ultimately satisfying. Here is Josh’s overall take on the manuscript:
This is an immersive book. From geography to spy jargon to cultural details, you really bring these places and these characters to life in such a way that it’s easy to believe that they’re real. I don’t know if it’s research, experience, or some combination of the two, but I believed dang near everything in this book. That’s not easy to do, but you nailed it.
The dilemma at hand—an American spy finding out he has a long-lost brother rising up the ranks for ISIS—is about as high-stakes as it gets. It’s a unique enough twist to hopefully garner you some interest in the query trenches. It can be hard to stand out in some of the more popular mass-market genres, but you’ve got a hook that offers a lot of possibilities there.
You’re funny! This wasn’t a book I expected to make me laugh, but once every few chapters there was a throwaway line or bit of dialogue that absolutely cracked me up. These types of thrillers have to take themselves seriously, but you do a beautiful job using humor to break the tension here and there.
I’ll spare myself the embarrassment of sharing the next 8 pages of criticism he levels, all justified. I’m working my way through it now.