Jeff Pollet

I had a few goals with my first book, and they weren't particularly lofty goals--I wanted to write something that I would enjoy reading, I wanted to get the book all the way to "published", and I wanted to sell more than 100 copies. This set of goals determined some of the choices I made, of course. To get it across the finish line, I decided to use Amazon, for instance, despite some issues I have with the company. I kept the book short and sweet, not particularly complex, so I would actually finish the damn thing. And, I decided to not hire a professional editor. A few good friends helped me edit the book, and they gave me great feedback, caught a lot of errors (some simple and some not-so-simple). It was also fun to interact with those people, people I know and trust and enjoy getting constructive criticism from. There was some awkwardness regarding some of the folks I know who I didn't ask to do a read of the book, but (gratefully) most of those folks didn't...

Began editing Miskatonic Bay (Lake Miskatonic, Book Two) today, after a few weeks of not looking at it at all (on purpose!). I'm going by feel as far as how much I want to/ought to work on it, trying to find the best way to continue to move forward. Lake Miskatonic is the first book I've ever finished writing, but by far not the first book I ever started writing, so the habits I got into when writing it seem important to continue. One of those habits is to take a break when I feel like it, but it's really hard to do that, because of the fear of never-coming-back-to-finish, which had been my mode of operation for all of the books I never finished! But I took a break anyway. I gave myself a few weeks. Maybe three. And a date to begin again. And when I didn't feel like beginning again on that date, I didn't. Not even sure if that's the right choice, honestly. Many writers will tell you you're either in it or you're not Stephen King in his book On...