State of the Book

Well, time flies when you’re having fun.

I did a little bit of traveling, and found that summer break does not mean vast amounts of time to spend on novel-revision. I mean I should have known, that’s what always happens.

I found a first reader for novel one. I delivered the thing to her on paper, all printed out, at the end of August but haven’t heard back yet.

By now novel two really is almost revised. I am currently doing the type-in of all the changes that I made to the paper copy. Of course I estimated that I could finish that this week. Since I’m now on page 41 with only three more days to go I might have to adjust my estimate. Maybe.

Book three is laying around doing nothing. I think I might be able to finally write the end after finishing this editing round on novel two.

Next steps will be: read through novel one aloud and then find some more beta readers, finish type-in of novel two, and then read through it again, and then finish rough draft of novel three.

Working on three novels at once does have advantages. I can make sure that book one doesn’t have anything in it that contradicts novel three but it sure feels like I’m not really making progress.

Onwards and upwards I say.

So it’s slow going but when is it not?

The first in the „Magically Real“ trilogy is exactly in the same place as last December, only I read through it again, and I still like it, which is good. I will have to check if I can leave the song lyrics in there because of copyright issues, if not I will have to find a way to evoke the same kind of feelings with my own words instead. Aprt from checking that out my next step will be to put the novel through grammerly and to read it aloud to myself.

The second book is almost revised. Which sounds better than it is. I have started to become very weary of the word „almost“. As my husband says, „Almost done usually means about fifty percent.“ I am at the point of revision where I have a plan what I want to change and how, so that the actual cutting will be not too painful. So the next step for that will be to actually cut the manuscript and put the new things in that I think were missing and then to go through it again to look at it as a whole.

And the third book is what I’m activiely working on at the moment. I had hoped to finish the rough draft by the end of April but I still have about 5,000 to 7,000 more words to write on that. There was a big music project demanding my time and energy at the beginning of May, and that meant I didn’t write anything for two weeks. Which was okay, and which I had planned for in advance. But afterwards I didn’t quite get back to writing, and that has been rather frustrating. So that will be the next thing I tackle, finishing that first draft.

I never quite managed to do a complete outline for that book. Which is a big mistake, and I believe that’s the reason why writing this takes so long. When I have no idea what to write next I have a lot of days when I open the document, stare at it for ten minutes or so, and then I close the document again, and that’s that for the day. I always tell myself that I’ll think about the story for the rest of the day and write some at night but I never do.

But.

I did plan the next few scenes out, this time with pen on paper, and so I hope that I’ll be writing them over the course of next week, and then that rough draft will be done. I’ll implement the revisions to book two over the rest of the month, then have a quick look at book number one, and then spend July working on revising book three. I hope. I will also travel for a week in June, so I’m not quite sure how productive I’ll be then. For revision I work with a ton of worksheets and the printed out manuscript, and I don’t really want to lug that around for a week.

Maybe I should use that week to brainstorm ideas for the book after that. I’m thinking of starting a new series. That would be cool.

The new thing around the corner always feels more exciting than the old thing you’ve been working on for quite some time, doesn’t it?

I’m thinking I should post more often here, and I hope that I actually will. Apart from my bad book reviews (I am almost finished writing „what I read in December“ but I will have to wait until the end of December to finish it, of course) I was thinking you might be interested in how my writing is doing. Since this is my writing blog.

Now I won’t pester you with long accounts of my struggle to work on my writing. Yes, I do tend to procrastinate, yes, my life is busy enough without trying to cram creative work in there but I don’t want to write a blog about my excuses for not writing.

Currently I am working on my contemporary fantasy series. I am a little reluctant to tell you all about the premise and story yet because I feel like I should have it reasonably close to finished before doing that. I’m afraid I might jinx it.

I can tell you that the series is called „Magically Real“ for now, the protagonist is a female jazz pianist, and the thing has witches, vampires, magic, and a lot of music in it.

So far I have three books in various stages. The first one is in revised first draft, and I’m hoping to revise that once again soon. The second is in rough draft, and I’m planning to start revising that starting in January, and the third one is what I am planning right now.

I am really bad at planning stories, I used to always just start writing but then I found that that makes the process of revision much harder, and so I have become a convert to the planning. Only I still need more practice doing that.

I would really want to have all three ready for publication some time next year, I’ll keep you posted about progress.