The Black Dagger Brotherhood_ An Insider's Guide - J. R. Ward [66]
There was real potential for Z not coming across as heroic, and I was really nervous when my editor read him for the first time, because I wasn’t sure whether I’d pulled it off. She loved him, though, and so did the readers. So do I, although I have to say that I haven’t reread him since I reviewed his galleys—and he’s the only book of mine that I haven’t cracked open when he came back to me bound.
I think it’s going to be a lot longer before I read him. And I might never.
A word on the editorial/publishing process. Lots of people, prepublished authors and readers alike, ask me how exactly the different stages of production work and how long each takes. For me, the whole thing is about nine months.
Once I finish my outline, which takes at least a month, I send it to my editor, who reads it. After we touch base, I get down to work, taking what is in the outline and fleshing it out with description, dialogue, and narration. I tend to write half of the book, then go back and read and edit my way through that block of material. This reread is critical for me. In the Brotherhood books there’s so much going on that I don’t want to risk losing track of all the plot arcs and character development. When I get to the halfway point again, I finish the book all the way through. This whole first drafting process usually takes about four months of seven-day-a-week writing.
Typically I take a week off and let the manuscript sit while I work on other things. This break is really important so that when I go back I have fresh eyes—and if I don’t get the downtime, I really don’t think the draft finishes as well as it should. When I return to the book, it usually takes me another six weeks to do the heavy lifting associated with getting scene order correct and chapter breaks at the right point and the proper intensity of emotion. Then it’s another couple weeks to smooth, smooth, smooth.
At this point I’m blurry eyed and dizzy, because the closer to the end I get, the longer my days are—usually the two weeks before I turn anything in, I’m working fourteen to sixteen hours a day. When it comes to whatever Thursday night is the deadline for mailing (it’s always Thursday so the manuscripts drop on Friday), I print the whole book out, get into my car in a zombie state and a pair of wilted sweats, and drive across town to Kinko’s, where I FedEx the thing overnight to my editor.
Usually the manuscript boxes weigh about eight pounds and cost a hundred dollars to send off.
After my editor reads the material, she and I go over what we think comes through well and what could be even stronger. We also touch base on whatever might go a little far for the market either sexually or in terms of violence. What I love most about my editor is that she lets me be true to what I see and doesn’t dictate. It’s a collaboration focused on making sure that what’s in my head gets onto the page with the best impact possible—and any changes or additions are my choice and my choice alone.
After that editorial meeting, I go back and rework the manuscript, tightening it, getting the words more precise, amplifying where necessary. By this time the chapters are set, the scene order is solid, the peaks and valleys in emotion and action are really humming along, so it’s pretty much just tweaking. That and line editing. I am incredibly anal about words and dialogue and flow, and I go over every single word in the manuscripts over and over again. Nothing ever feels good enough.
For this phase of the process I typically take six weeks, and the manuscript will grow in page length with each succeeding pass I make. A first draft for me is about five hundred pages, double-spaced Times New Roman twelve point. (I can’t write