Return to the form where I succeeded the most

Over 2024 to early 2025 I wrote my first book. I planned doing that for over a decade. Created endless notes of my sci-fi world, its history, the outlines of story ideas I want to tell. One thing still didn’t happen over long time, and that was the most basic thing: to actually write.

Creating in public seems to be my secret sauce

One day, didn’t even looking for a new hobby, just watched a video that really connected with me. Being an engineer, I am fascinated by its world, even other areas than mine. This is how I watched almost all air crash investigation content and still love flying after well over the hundredth time. As a passanger.

When I ran out of those content, somehow dear youtube algorithm suggested another channel, Brick Immortar, but he was about ship catastrophes. That was just something new, I got primed for it by the Internet Historian’s piece about the Costa Concordia, so I dived in. Halfway watching Brick Immortar’s story about the ferry lost near South Korea, I had a new idea.

What if the NTSB would be needed in the far future? How an investigation would look like for a faster than light spaceship? A rescue mission? I thought it is a wild idea, noone would care about it, so… it was perfect. Placed in the world I was building for a decade, this gave a no-risk opportunity to just start writing.

And so I did. In less than an hour, I had my first scene online on medium.com. No edit, just around 3 pages, but gave a noir-hard-sci-fi, bit of cyberpunk vibes. Then posted about it, then to force myself to actually finish what I started, posted that I will write weekly. 60 weeks later, my 80.000 word manuscript was published, online, for about 5 returning readers and plenty more occasional readers.

That was almost a year ago, and I made no visible progress. You know, the first manuscript is usually not very good. And requires a lot more work to make it a real book, an enjoyable experience for readers.

I really liked working on it, and felt immense accomplishment when I was able to say, I finished it, and I wrote a book.

Here I am, returning to this project, to finally give it the polish it needs.

Due to publishing on medium.com, the first global publishing right was already done, however, I don’t know how the editing process will affect that. It may return to me and can publish it traditionally. Don’t know.

Anyhow, I can make it self-published. The accomplishment of having written my first book is enough for me for this run.

I may return with another book(s), after this one is done.

However, small progress, yet I learned critical lessons during that off-year, read on to hear about my experience:

• I hired two beta readers, Americans, so I can get native feedback;
• Found a great course on udemy, from an ex-Wall Street Journal editor about how to write with flair and I can apply the learnings to fiction stories;
• Bought a book about editing and the first chapter already taught something I could not find otherwise;
• And finally, I printed at a copy shop my own manuscript, forcing me to format the whole text I should have done way earlier.

Beta reading is an expensive necessity

Good and informative beta reading is not easy to come by. Family, friends, the occasional reader on the internet can only get you so far. At a point, professional needs to be hired.

During 2025, I did just that, budget out a run, two separate reader, each was 500 USD. I got a 10-page, detailed critic from both of them and it was the so much needed mirror for my little creation and my skills as a writer.

Summarizing it, they pointed out many flaws:

• Format: was unusual, hard to read and I forgot some TODOs in!
• Grammar: plenty of grammatical errors made it a chore to read through my book.
• Plot speed: too much bogged down at the middle for the repair tasks around the ships and not enough drama!
• Flat characters: nor personality, nor unique voice, they all blended together, and had no space to shine.

Mainly these above points I will focus on solving in the short term. Read on for my immediate learnings and what I did to apply them!