When you read this, I will be in northern France walking through the towns and countryside where my ancestors had lived for hundreds of years. I didn’t want to find myself scrambling to get a post up when I knew I would be walking an average of twenty kilometres a day along the Somme River. As I write this, just a few days before leaving to catch the plane to Paris, I am thinking of you, our readers here at Naturist Fiction dot Org. I will be gone for six weeks and I am spending these last few days making sure that my readers here, on my Wattpad page, and my Patreon page, have something to read. As a writer, it is all about honoring a commitment to one’s readers.
As a writer, I have to admit that when I am in the creative aspect of getting a story out of my head onto paper [or keyboard], I have no thoughts at all about a single reader, let alone readers as a whole. However, once I have finished writing the story, I return to the story knowing that it is vital to read it with the eyes of a reader, not as the author. That initial rewrite often has the story grow. What was intuitively known to me as an author only left blank holes for a reader. It would be much simpler to simply type “the end” and move on to the next story clamoring to be told rather than worry about spelling, grammar, and logic.
I have one writer friend, James, here on the prairies whom I met a number of years ago through NaNoWriMo [National Novel Writing Month] when a group of us gathered in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada for a coffee and summoning of encouragement for the daunting task that was to begin a week later, the task of writing 50,000 words in thirty days. One of the stalwarts of the group, James, has finished 14 years of participation and has written well over a million words in the process, at an average of 120,000 words per book project. He writes the story, sets it aside and waits for the next year’s event. He doesn’t rewrite nor publish any of his stories. Though I find it strange, it meets James’ needs as a writer. Sadly, readers will never get to see his stories.
My last NaNoWriMo project written last November is still not ready for readers. It has begun to grow much bigger than my usual 70,000-80,000 word story as I backfill all the holes left behind in the rush to get the first 53,000 words written in the allotted thirty days. I am also still re-writing the novel written the year before. With any luck, it will be ready for readers in the late winter or early spring. I won’t make the mistake of publishing too soon again like I did with my first novel which has been republished. You are worth more than the best that I can give you in my stories.