Hi all. Sorry for the delayed update again this week. Partly that is because I have a seven year old and it’s shortly before Halloween, resulting in a LOT of activities for her to attend, but partly this delay is also because I was trying to decide what to say. I decided early in the last week not to try and make my usual goals, and so I got no work done in the past week…but I did intend that. I just forgot to announce it. In truth, though, my progress on the new book hasn’t been what I wanted for several weeks now. The last time I hit my goal for a week was in mid-August, after all, and while some of the reasons that happened were completely understandable and some of those goals were missed by small amounts, it still feels worth a re-assessment.

I’m actually not changing much in my plans, as I think that my decision a little over a week ago to shift to “editing mode” on my draft is still the right decision. However, I had always intended that when I made that shift, I would start it with two to four weeks of a break from the draft in order to get distanced from the manuscript. Writers who don’t do this before jumping into editing often find themselves clinging stubbornly to sentences they LOVE which don’t actually support the progress of the book as a whole. As a result, I don’t plan to resume work on the draft until November…which is this Friday. However, this is likely gong to push release back some. I’ll do some evaluations in November as I see how quickly editing it going and give an update late-ish November on how those plans are going to be affected. I simply can’t guess accurately right now.

Before I started my break, I had begun the process of outlining the character and plot arc of each major character, and that’s no doubt where I’ll start again. However, that is likely a one-night task. I know the story here pretty well by now. After that, I’m going to start work character by character, going through the entire book from their POV and updating/adding the scenes needed for their arc. First, I’ll work on Niamsha’s arc, mostly because hers is the most disorganized and is furthest from where I want it to be. Then I’ll probably move to Arkaen, then Kilasha, then Sayli… in order of who is most connected to who from a storyline perspective. After those four are solid, I’ll clean up the other POVs in the draft, which don’t have a full arc but are still important additions to the book

There’s a good and a bad side to doing editing this way, rather than working from start to finish and weaving everything together at the same time. This plan will result in a draft that still needs a pretty solid read to make sure I’m not introducing contradictions into the book (i.e., Arkaen says “it’s a really cold spring” and then Niamsha says “Gee, what nice fall leaves!”). Also, if I work though Niamsha’s entire story, move to Arkaen, and decide that Arkaen would react to something Niamsha did differently than I originally wrote, I might have to go BACK to Niamsha’s story again. But it creates a stronger story for each character and makes it less likely to end up with someone who spends most of the story just sitting around waiting for the next thing to happen to them. That’s definitely where Niamsha’s story is right now, and it’s never going to work that way.

All of that said… I haven’t really sat down to work heavily on this book in almost a month now, and I’m finding myself really excited to get back into it. That’s a great sign for what progress might look like on Friday and beyond.