The Final Act

There’s this misguided impression some people have that once you reach the status of semi-professionally published, writing a novel becomes a mundane affair.  Some people think that once you conquer the mountain that is the novel, all subsequent novels will be a piece of piss.

This is absolute horseshit.

The Great September Word War

September.  How the hell did it get to be September already?

With the advent of fall comes the knowledge that the year is running out.  We’re now two thirds of the way through and I reckon I’m about half a book behind my schedule of four books this year.

Which is not bad, but gives me the worry that I might get to the end of this year and have just one finished book to show for it.

So like a lot of writers it seems, September is knuckle down and write month.  If I can get this Thieving King draft done by end of September (and I’ve got a feeling that this is going to be a BIG book), Thunder of Crows could be my NaNo novel and then Refugee could be edited in October… or something.

Gah!  I’ve gone from quietly confident to quietly panicking.  Who stole the summer?

To help me I’ve declared a public word war on the incredibly talented CE Murphy.  Like me, she is behind schedule and looking to have a busy September.  We’re keeping it simple, most words over the month wins, although it’s less about ‘winning’ and more about ‘getting stuff done’.  Feel free to join in at #SeptemberWordWar

Managed to get over 3000 words of Maureen fighting Vargs (i.e. Wargs / Worgs) done as a warm up yesterday so whilst I don’t expect to win it’s given me the impetus to start cranking up the productivity.  I’m especially pleased as swapping between the 1st person present POV of Black as Knight and the 3rd person limited past of Thieving King has proved difficult before now.

Anyone would think that Thieving King has a potential release date!

Writing Progress

So April got off to a slow start with a number of days off the writing.  Issues with the leg have slowed me down a little the past fortnight and taken my attention elsewhere.  And Storm Chasing season is just starting in the US meaning I’m glued to livestreams of an evening.

I’m also moving into the second act of this draft of Thieving King which is where things are radically different from previous drafts.  This has been the point where things have broken in the past.  This time they feel pretty tight, so I’m really pleased with that but I’m still haunted by ghosts of the past a little.  There’s still a little fear there and I note that progress seems to really slow down as I move between acts, as if I need to think a little more carefully and spend a bit more time planning.  It’s possible that I need to schedule a week break between acts with future writing projects.

But with it has come the realisation of two things – the first that this novel is a lot longer than I at first thought.  Over the last year I’ve got much better at estimating my word count but it takes a half dozen chapters or so before I really get a feel for the novel’s pace and can really start to estimate.  I was aiming for around 120,000 words, it’s currently on target for 200,000 words.  If my experience with Black as Knight has told me anything it’s that it will drop to possibly 170,000.  Still a BIG book though!

As a result I’m not going to finish this draft by Easter.   To a degree that’s OK.  I started a month later than planned anyway.  I’ve set impossible deadlines for myself this year to see what I’m really capable of and build a much more realistic idea of the time I need to write a book.  Ideally I’d like to be able to comfortably do 2 books a year.  I want to get 4 novels done this year and I’m already working on my second, and that’s against a backdrop of a lot going on with work and leg and stuff.   And the problem hasn’t been a ‘lack of word count’ but ‘amount of book’.

March’s word count was double that of February but as I am away with work for nearly a month from Easter, I reckon April and May’s will be very poor.  Still, I planned to get no writing done at all whilst away so anything I manage will be a bonus.

Overall, I’m really pleased with the last month’s progress.  I’m really testing and fine tuning my processes this year with a lot of experimentation, trial and error.  It’s making the writing a lot of fun and I think I’m writing better books as a result.

Ghosts of Past Drafts

Work is progressing with Thieving King but I’ve found it more difficult than I thought.

Part of this is because I’ve trod these chapters before.  Whilst the tone and the attitude of some of the characters has altered slightly in this revision, at this stage it’s still very subtle.  And so those chapters are haunted by ghosts of the past.

There’s a lot of fear here.  Thieving King was originally the second half of Four Realms and so it shares a lot of the same structure.  In the past few weeks I’ve realised just how complicated that structure is.  In some ways it’s no wonder the first book took as long as it took to write because from where I stand now this feels like an incredibly complicated novel.

And so somewhere in the back of my head is a worry that something will still fail as I move into the next act of this draft.  I hope not.  One of the things this draft does is remove some of the darker elements that constantly punched you in the gut for ones that are a little more finessed and hopefully whilst they don’t hit as hard, they kinda hurt more.

But I’ve yet to settle into this novel.  I’m very nervous about it on so many levels and it’s only as I now take it in subtly different directions to previous drafts that I find myself relaxing a bit more and enjoying the process.

Still I worry something will derail me, so there’s still this sense of blind panic of getting this draft done.

Even with real life getting in the way the last couple of weeks I’ve still made solid progress.  I should hit 20,000 words tonight.  That’s not bad considering everything and I’ve got a couple of big writing weekends coming up where I hope to really pile on the words.

Hopefully as I transition into act two of the novel it’ll get a little easier but it’s surprising how each novel you write throws up its own set of unique challenges.

Thieving King Revision 3 Outline Is Done

If there’s one thing that’s more difficult than planning a novel, it’s taking an existing plan and reworking it.

I’ve talked about the issues I had with the first two drafts of  The Thieving King and the plan for February was to take the plot of the novel, gut it and rebuild it.  That’s hard to do, partly because you have to kill a lot of darlings and secondly because you have to judge what good stuff you’re wanting to get rid of because it now feels old, and which old stuff you want to keep for sentimental reasons.

In short, it’s tough and there’s been plenty of times when I’ve asked myself “is this still an awesome book?”  I’ve worried when I didn’t feel as excited about it as Black as Knight but I’ve come to realise that’s simply because parts of this novel have gone back years to when it was originally the second half of The Four Realms and the whole first book called The Thieving King.

So I’m going into this draft with some nerves.  Some subplots have gone and it looks like one favourite character I was really hoping to bring back isn’t going to make an appearance in this book (which I’m very sad about).  Some new characters have gone through major changes but the main story has not changed.

I think all the Point of View characters now go through really strong character arcs, and the only thing now needed is some kick ass writing to get this draft done.  It’s going to be interesting to see just how quick I write it.  Seeing as I already have the next novel I want to write pencilled in for June / July, I really need to get motoring.

I’m still wondering when I’m going to get time to edit all these novels!