If you want to be an Author; Books you must read.

 On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

Two books by Noah Lukeman: The First Five Pages, and How to Land (and Keep) a Literary Agent
Those two books are so good I would recommend reading everything he has written but those are the only two I have read so far.

Self Editing for Fiction Writers by Rennie Browne & Dave King

I have read a few others but so far those have been hands down the most useful/helpful.

I am sure there are other standout books to help aspiring authors so please let me and others know about them in the comment section.

Editing my book

So, I've finished my book, the first very rough draft, that is. I thought it was time to celebrate, it is a major accomplishment after all. And more importantly start the query process. But I've learned it's not time to start the query process. I guess I read somewhere something along the lines of "great you finished your book, time to start querying." But I guess it meant completely finished. Now I have put querying on hold, and picked up the book to edit it. Man is it a lot. Almost overwhelming. I can do it though, God help me.

For the first chapter I marked 94 edits of some sort. Today I added about 30 more. I haven't decided if I am going to look at it right away after I make those changes or come back to it later once I am deeper into the book but I know that this is not the last round. I just read a great book that said you should only start querying once you are completely done editing the book, his example was the 40th draft. I doubt I'll get to forty but I will say this. I a much more capable editor now than I was 3 months ago, and I was much better then, than I was a year ago. I am very proud of how far I have come along in my ability to edit and honestly a year ago I would not have thought I would be able to be where I am now ever. What is even more encouraging is that I see myself not only capable of further improvement but I have no doubt that I will keep improving.

Back at it

It has been a while since my last post. Could it be I was depressed about the outcome of the election. Well no. I was fairly certain that Obama was going to win I could see it coming. It has just been two months but it feels like a lot longer. Looking back at it now there are some things I want to address.

First in general the Democrats were sore winners. On the night of the election at my girlfriends apartment complex many people rushed out celebrating and they were quite obnoxious, some were using a lot of profanity, mainly towards Romney, but also towards anyone that requested they quiet down.

Also working at a restaurant I had multiple guests come and gloat, they were extremely ecstatic, and I cannot understand for the life of me why.

Hopefully if you are reading this you have already read my previous posts on politics and you understand that I am a rational but politically active but logical person.

Having friends across the political spectrum I am shocked by how deeply divided people still are over the election. I would expect that if Romney would have won it wouldn't be that big of a deal to most democrats, I mean both Romney and McCain are nearly democrats themselves, neither one are anything like Bush. Although Palin was abysmal and Ryan was %100 republican I still do not see the big deal. Granted Obama has been better than what I feared I still hate Obamacare, I still do not have insurance. And this whole gun situation is a little scary but more on that later.

I guess one of my biggest problems is that I still need a job, and it doesn't seem to be getting any easier. The government has yet to help me help myself even though I have asked. and I made more money in 2010, even with going on vacation to Germany for 3(yes Three) months, than 2011 and 2012 combined but part of that might be due to my motorcycle accident.

So this was more of a rant than anything but sometimes you have to get things off of your chest in order to move on to things that are actually important.