Hey, everyone.
I know, I know. It’s been a while since I posted here. It’s not because I’ve stopped caring about the blog, or about updating those of you who check in here. That’s not the case. I’ve just been super busy.
A lot of that has been good busy, though. At school, I’ve been making progress on my thesis, and going to more social events, too. Combine that with TA work, my efforts to read more along with upping my writing pace, and all the usual housekeeping stuff, and I’ve been all over the place.
As a result, certain other things have suffered. I’m making less music than usual, for one thing (although I’m guessing most of you don’t really care about that). And another thing that’s suffered has, as you’ve no doubt guessed, been this blog.
I’m glad to say, though, that the writing this month has gone pretty well! Most of my focus has been on finishing up draft 1 of The 2nd Realm, or, as I now call it, The Procurers. The name “The Procurers” was always my intended title for the entire series, with “The 2nd Realm” being the title for book 1: after some thought, though, I decided that The Procurers was a better name for the first book. Less chance for confusion, at any rate.
So. The Procurers. When I gave my last update, I was at about 135,000 words. Now I’m just shy of 165,000, and getting closer to the end. I can see the finish line. I’m maybe 3 or 4 chapters away from being done, which is maybe two weeks’ worth of work at worst, unless I really get stuck again. I might even be able to finish up faster than that; if I catch fire as I approach completion, I might even be able to finish in a week. My chapters are usually around 3 to 4 thousand words long. If we say I have four chapters left, at 4,000 words each, that’s 16,000 words left to write; even writing 2,000 words a day, that’s 8 days of work.
As I said, I’m getting closer.
Of course, finishing the first draft is just the beginning. This is especially true for me; while some writers revise while they write, often going back to fix things they feel are wrong with earlier parts of the story, sometimes completely rewriting earlier sections before diving back into fresh copy, I don’t do that. I like to get everything down first; I like having a completed story in front of me before I start revising. The downside to writing like this, of course, is that my prose is really rough at the end of draft one. And that’s not even considering the plot holes, continuity errors, lack of description, and other giant problems that beset these early versions of the story.
Some parts of The Procurers may need to be completely rewritten. That’s already happened for a few of the books I’ve worked on: Kosan turned out to need a complete, ground-up rewrite, while I’ve already rewritten the ending to Nightmares Inc. once, before I even showed it to a pro editor. The Procurers is a bigger and more complicated book than either of those; the heist segment, which has already given me fits, will almost certainly require extensive revisions, if not several complete rewrites. Other parts of the book may need heavy revision, too; even in the best-case scenario, it’ll be years before this book ever hits shelves. If it ever even does.
But, if the worst comes to pass and The Procurers never sees the light of day, well…that’ll be disappointing, but at least I had fun writing it.
And The Procurers isn’t the only thing I’ve been working on. I’ve also been plugging away, slowly but surely, on the Kosan rewrite. I’m only about 3 chapters in on that – with everything else going on, and my main focus on The Procurers, I haven’t been able to go too fast with the rewriting – but it’s progress nonetheless. And I’ve done a little work on a few of my other books, trying to stoke the creative flames a little, so that when I do finish draft 1 of The Procurers, I can jump right into another project and start plugging away at that.
But we’ll see. As I said, life has been busy. And in addition to all my writing work and my school work, I also want to focus on getting a life this year. Making more friends. Having more experiences. You know. All that fun stuff.
Anyway. I think I’ll leave things there for now. I do have lots to do, after all. Until next time, have fun, stay safe and keep reading.
