I have three topics to bring up in this post.

1. The Bridgewater BookFest is right around the corner, and I’ll be there! It’s held on Bridge Street in Bridgewater, PA 15009, on Saturday, September 14 between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. I’ll have some table space in the writers’ tent. So if you’re in the area, please stop by! It should be a lot of fun to mingle with other book-lovers, meet area authors, and stock up on signed books. For more information and a complete schedule of events, please see the web site at http://www.bridgewaterbookfest.com.

2. A few friends and family members by now have asked me just what revising a book involves. When you tell people you’ve finished the first draft of your book, a very commonly-heard question is, “When will it be out?” People mean well by asking this. They’re expressing interest and support. But the question tends to make writers roll their eyes. First, there’s no guarantee that the book ever will be “out.” Being “out” — if you mean in stores — presupposes that stores will order the book. And that presupposes that some editor has loved the book enough to persuade the editorial and marketing departments of a publishing house to take a chance on it and invest their money. And that presupposes that the writer, his agent, and later, the aforementioned editor have been able to arrive at the form of the book that they’re satisfied is its best possible. And that can’t happen until the writer himself has gotten from that ecstatic finished first draft to a draft that he feels is truly ready to leave the nest. Depending on the writer, that can mean one more go-through or several more. “Books aren’t written,” many wise writers have said: “they’re rewritten.” Almost nothing comes out right the first time.

So the writer has almost no control over “when the book will be out.” All we can do is write from our hearts — finish what we start — write with all our loving care, being true to our characters and ourselves. We can control whether the book gets written (assuming, of course, that God gives us the time, health, and peace of mind). We can’t make editors choose the book from out of the mountains of submissions they receive. We can’t make the publisher’s financial people decide that the book will sell. We usually have little say in what goes onto the cover, front or back. We don’t determine the release date. We certainly don’t sit down with Barnes & Noble and convince them to stock our book or which stores around the country to place them in. A brand-new book, after it goes through the entire process of being conceived, written, re-written, and sold, may be “out” in the form of a single copy, or three, at your local large bookstore. It may be buried back in the fantasy section with only the spine showing, and it may be there for about a month before it vanishes, giving way to the next new releases.

Not being gloomy here — just telling the story the way it is.

Anyway, the question I set out to answer in my point 2 is: What does revision entail? One way I explain it is this: When you get to the end of the first draft, you are beginning to realize what your book is about, what your characters are really like; so the outset of your story probably no longer matches your ending. You have to go back and readjust the first chapters so that they fit the book you’ve written.

There are the excess words to be trimmed, the murky tangents, the scenes that don’t contribute to the whole. I do a lot of chopping in the second-draft stage. And I do some adding. Certain elements need focusing and highlighting early on, so that the way is paved for what happens later. Parts of the story may need to be clearer. Characters, in my case, need developing a little more.

Most of all, in my second draft, I usually need to fix the flow and pacing of the book.  The first time through, I’m intent on getting the story down, on developing the experience for the reader. Senses, information, logical progression, style, characters . . . There’s a lot to juggle. I’m writing a couple thousand words a day, leaving, coming back, stopping and starting . . . When I read the whole thing later, I find places where it bogs down, where a bunch of exposition has halted the story in its tracks.

It’s an enjoyable process. Revision is often the part of writing that’s the most fun for me. But it does take time and careful attention.

3. Julie put something into words in a striking and insightful way yesterday. I’d been trying to figure out what it is that makes me a fantasy writer — or more specifically, what aspect is common to my stories that identifies them as fantasy. I’m certainly not a “big kingdom saga” writer; I don’t write huge novels with a map at the front and warring lands and a quest to the end of the world. I don’t generally write about dragons and sorcerers. I don’t write romances in which one or both main characters is humanlike but not human. So in what way am I a “fantasy” writer?

With scarcely a thought, Julie nailed it squarely: My stories — pretty much all of them, the books and the shorter ones — are about a World Beyond. I write of hidden places . . . inside, down the tunnel, behind the hedge, across the sea, under the mountain, across the mountain, buried deep, secret, long ago . . . and these are all illuminated by the belief in a realm that we do not see, an invisible world, a dimension of spirit, a place unbound by time. I write about characters’ journeys to that world, or in that world. They learn and grow.

There’s the famous C. S. Lewis observation that we have yearnings for which there is no satisfaction in this life; and if we have yearnings built into us, there must logically be, somewhere, a fulfillment of them. If that fulfillment is not in the world we see, then it must be in a world we do not yet see.

A World Beyond: that is at the heart of all the fantasy stories I love most. I’ll continue to apply myself to getting my characters and my readers there.