Musings | Debra R. Borys

In 2012 I was living in Seattle and trying to supplement my part-time job with some freelance writing. One of the things I contracted to write was a personalizable novel for a European company called PersonalNOVEL that allowed readers to change details like names and places in order to personalize them to their own specifications.

Because I wasn’t getting paid big bucks and therefore didn’t want to spend a lot of time getting the job done, I pitched them three potential plots based on old ideas that I had already written or at least started but that never went further than that.

The idea they selected became Through the Dark, which was based on a complete novel I had written almost thirty years earlier. The original manuscript itself was actually in storage in Illinois so I tried to recreate it from memory since I was not able to edit the original story itself. I put the title out under my pseudonym of Deb Donahue because it was quite a different style from my Debra Borys novels and short stories.

The result was a decent book, I think; they liked it anyway, and paid me for it. I even eventually self-published the same book as Eyes at the Window for U.S. readers. When I moved back to Illinois, however, and got my things out of storage, I reread the original manuscript and realized how different the published version was from my original intent. While the three main characters were basically the same and had the same motives, I’d completely forgotten that I had used a fourth point of view character which added a whole different set of complications to the plot.

In addition, the character’s personalities were quite different in the two versions, and there were key scenes missing that provided depth and added action. The original story, in fact, was different enough from what got published that I have decided it is worth rewriting to publish under my real name, adding that dark suspense flavor you can find in my other Borys books.

It will be fun to compare the three versions of a story that was sparked by the same kernel of an idea. I’m going to post comparison excerpts here from time to time to show the evolution of the idea from concept to remembered to revised. If you are curious to see how one story can be written three different ways, I hope you’ll check back each week to see what I’ve done with the piece.

Seems like everyone’s always using the year end to count their blessings and resolve to accomplish great things in the next 365 days. Normally I avoid that like the plague. No reason why, except maybe because everyone else is doing it and I like to think I’m different.

But I really need to do something to kick myself in the pants and meet some goals I’ve been trying to establish. So let’s look at some of my failures this year:

I wanted to finish and publish A Bull by the Horns
I wanted my third Street Stories novel, Box of Rain (released in print early in the year) to be the book that brought the series to the attention of more readers.
I wanted to lose weight or at least live a healthier lifestyle
I wanted to win a house in Asheville NC so I could move closer to my sons

So what did I do instead?

I finished a really rough draft of Bull, then set it aside so I could get some perspective before editing. I did publish a “new” novel in 2015 on Kindle and in print. Eyes at the Window is the non-personalized, U.S. version of a book published as Through the Dark by PersonalNOVEL in Europe and the UK. I also started repurposing three old manuscripts by typing them into the computer in preparation for editing them into finished, published works.
I won’t really know how well Box of Rain is selling until I get a royalty report from my publisher in early 2016, though from the Amazon ranking, I suspect it’s not the breakthrough hit I’d hoped. However, I did attend a few author fairs during the year, two of which are pretty high profile, Chicago’s Printers Row Lit Festival and the Chicago Book Expo.
My health did not get any worse, which doesn’t seem like any great accomplishment unless you think about how little time I devoted to being healthy.
I took a trip to Virginia and North Carolina and visited both sons for the first time since they moved to the eastern U.S.

What unexpected accomplishments did I achieve in 2015?

I won two awards at the In Print Professional Writers Word of Art 2 contest: Spare Change won both the best story award, but also the People’s Choice for best author/artist collaboration.
I helped organize and attended the first annual Author Fair at the Princeton Public Library.
I built a new website for the Princeton Public Library.

Should I set goals for 2016 to see how far I fail, or should I just wing it? I do know that unless death or dismemberment occurs, I will be going to Venice next September with a Dorothy Dunnett group I’ve traveled with before, so that’s something to look forward to. Some say writing down your goals helps you achieve them, but I’m not yet convinced. let me think on it a bit and get back to in, say, 2017.