Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

ACFW blog

Research Doesn’t Stop with Publication

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It was a year ago that the manuscript for my historical novel was attached to an email and sent to the publisher who requested it. I felt an incredible sense of relief. The thing was done. I could take a break from literally years of reading and research about the Civil War. Nine years of reading and research. 

I had started this even before I’d thought about writing a historical novel. I started reading about the Civil War because I was interested in it. It was only when I stumbled across an event called Grierson’s Raid, a Union cavalry raid in 1863 that the idea for a novel arose. The raid began at the border between Mississippi and Tennessee, swept down through the state, and eventually ended at Baton Rouge in Louisiana. It was designed as a diversion for Ulysses S Grant to quietly move his Union army across the Mississippi and attack Vicksburg from the east.

My ancestors had experienced that raid. They lived in the Brookhaven, Mississippi, area, one of sites that Grierson’s raiders had visited.

I researched everything I could about the raid and the broader war. Once I knew I would be writing a novel, my research intensified. By the time I sent the email to the publisher, I was close to exhausted, at least mentally.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW Blog.

The Sweet Agony of Waiting

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A publisher asks to see your full manuscript. You read it three more times, trying to eradicate all typos, missing words, unclear passages, and confusing lines. You attach it to a politely professional email, which you hope disguises what you’re experiencing in equal measure: hope, fear, and anxiety.

You hit send.

And then you wait.

Waiting may be as much or more exhausting than the writing itself, but it is a fact of life in book publishing.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW Blog. 

Photograph by David Taffett via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Save Your Editorial Cuts and Deleted Scenes

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I had several pieces of a novel-in-progress that I’d set aside from the manuscript. Two fell outside the overall timeline; I’d cut several others because, while they were interesting, detracted from the main flow of the story. One was most of an entire scene; one involved a character than I’d cut; and one simply had way too much detail for the short scene that it was.

But I’d kept them all, saved in a file on my computer as well as in my own head.

I was also working as a contributing editor for an online magazine, published several times a year and each issue centered on a theme. The editor was seeking articles, poems, and stories for the Christmas issue, and I remembered one of my cut pieces from the novel-in-progress.

It was a Christmas story, but it needed a bit of work. I pulled it from its Word file on my computer and began to read, edit, revise, and write. It needed work; reading it now, I’d still do more revising. But I submitted it, and it was accepted and duly published. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW blog.

Photograph by Alexander Grey via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Do You Outline, or Do You Write into the Dark?

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A problem developed while I was writing my fifth novel. The problem had to do with what I conceived as a minor character – a four-year-old boy who would grow to adulthood during the story. But he wasn’t the main character; far from it, in fact. He was supposed to have a bit role.

Unfortunately, he had a different idea.

I kept floundering with the manuscript because this kid kept sticking his head in. It was as if he was demanding a bigger part of the story. I was hitting dead end after dead end, and my writing was going nowhere.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW Blog. 

Photograph by Steven Houston via Unsplash. Used with permission.

What Happens When You Finally Type “The End”?

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It’s been more than two years since the writing began. It’s been more than four since the research started. A little over a month ago, on Jan. 16, I wrote this in my writing journal: “Reached 87,758 words. First draft completed.” Five days later, I wrote “First reread / editing completed.”

It was there I stopped, almost mentally and emotionally spent. I need to do the second edit, which for me is the most serious one. But I stopped, to catch my breath, reflect and take stock, and consider how the past two years of my life have been devoted to a story that is about 25 percent true and 75 percent fiction. Nd what I thought was mostly true mostly wasn’t.

I’ve published five novels and a non-fiction book. I’ve completed two novel manuscripts that have potential but need considerable reworking. I have at least five different novel ideas, and a dozen short stories, buzzing around my head. 

This story I just finished, this manuscript I’ve labored over, isn’t exactly a labor of love. It’s more a labor of sweat, the story I had to get done. 

To continue reading, please see me post today at the ACFW Blog.

Top photograph by Rui Silva sj via Unsplash. Used with permission.