When I look back over the past year, I’m a little perplexed at what I’ve done with the time. I feel like I’ve been frantically busy, but I don’t have a lot of new material to show for it. Since turning in Going Dark, I’ve managed to finish only one short story, and a really rough draft of a new novel.

Part of the issue, of course, was that all three novels in The Red trilogy were released last year, and that meant a lot of time spent on publicity (and anxiety… I’m good at anxiety). I also had a really hard time letting go emotionally of the trilogy and moving on to the new novel. It’s a situation I’ve faced before. After finishing my novel Vast, it took a long time for me to really get into writing Limit of Vision. But I got there eventually, and I feel like I’ve finally hit my stride with the new novel.

What turned things around for me was getting an outside opinion. I don’t think I’ve ever before shown a partial manuscript to anyone, on the grounds that I don’t want to be so discouraged by a negative response that I abandon the project. But I’m older now, more experienced, thicker skinned — and besides, I’d reached the point where I was spinning my wheels. So in early March I sent the manuscript off to Judith Tarr, who edited all three volumes of The Red trilogy. She evaluated what I had, made some nice comments, and pointed out where she thought the story was most lacking — and the feedback has really helped. I’ve been writing steadily since then. I went back to the beginning, and started filling out the lean parts, and dealing with all the figure-this-out-later notes, and progress is being made.

Some of this involves new scenes, but some is just detail work. A few days ago I was dealing with the question of what size helicopter was needed, how many seats were available, and who was sitting where. Today I’ve been racking my brain to get the timeline right. Since I’ve got characters operating on opposite sides of the planet, I need to know the day/night cycles, and how long it takes to get from point A to point B. I’m not sure how concerned readers are with this sort of thing, but it matters to me. 🙂

Anyway, I’ve been making changes in my writing routine in the hope of writing more, and writing faster. One of those changes is to try to do frequent Work-In-Progress Reports like this one. Maybe that will keep me accountable to myself!

Edit: Speaking of Judith Tarr…I just found out she’s holding a sale on editorial services, among other things. Find the details here.

Posted on: Tuesday, April 26th, 2016 at 3:34 pm
Categories: Work-In-Progress Reports.