The Last Track: A captivating and fast paced thriller<\/a><\/p>\nOver the course of the project, the manuscript evolved a great deal from the first draft to final PDF. My writing, whether intended or not, changed by virtue of the near religious adherence to schedule. While the genesis of a few characters were there from the earliest drafts, the story was definitely not. Feedback, I’ve learned, is almost always valuable, rarely ever critical. Routine check ins with readers after each draft made a huge difference to the finished product, forced me to try harder, and proved the single biggest determinant in the book finding a publisher that got the story.<\/p>\n
Because while the manuscript changed over its journey from gestation to slush piles, my intention never did. There was always one clear and irrefutable aim. Write a book that hit hard, early, and never let up. To me, the most important thing is the reader’s attention. The ability to hold that interst is the real currency of an author. Without a real reason to continue, there may be a great idea, but there very little point sharing it with the nightstand a reader placed the book upon, unfinished–unlikely ever to bother finding their place.<\/p>\n
And the neatest thing about the review, is that it sounds as if my intentions were actually realized; what I wanted to do, I actually got on the page.<\/p>\n
Now back to writing number next . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If there was anything that could make a birthday better, this four star, verified name and purchase Amazon.com review sure did: The Last Track: A captivating and fast paced thriller Over the course of the project, the manuscript evolved a great deal from the first draft to final PDF. My writing, whether intended or not, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11868"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11878,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11868\/revisions\/11878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}