I have now revised my 84,000-word first-draft novel into a 115,000 word second draft. And I’m not done yet. 🙄

Getting close, though! Goal is to get this draft done by October 31. Then I have to write a short story.

Another week of solid work done! I completely rewrote a chapter. The new version turned out to be far more complicated than the original, so it took some time. I also partly re-wrote and completely revised another chapter.

I’m looking forward to getting back to work tomorrow morning. After struggling with this novel for over a year, I feel like the work is going well at last.

For now, I’ve stopped worrying about marketing my other books, in an effort to focus all my energy on this one. This has resulted in plummeting book sales, but if that’s what it takes to get the next one finished, I’ll do it.

Oh and that short story I mentioned a couple of weeks ago? The novel wouldn’t let me spend more than a day on it. This novel wants to be done. I’ll work on the short story in a couple of weeks.

Please check your voter registration. If you’ve been dropped from the rolls, the advice I’ve heard is to seek a provisional ballot. Please vote!

I got through some tough work last week, but by Friday the political situation left me in a dark place. To counter that, I spent Saturday and Sunday away from social media and from news sites. Wow, do I feel better! I also had a productive weekend writing. One more chapter has been re-written and I have a solid plan for how to tackle the next chapter.

Not since my first novel do I remember revising a novel as much as I’m revising this one! And yet the plot is the same.

This draft feels like a “second first draft” if that makes any sense. I’ll definitely have to put it through another draft, but that should be far faster, once I get this version done.

Please check your voter registration, and please vote.

The short version: Progress has been slooowww.

The long version:

My big project this year was to finish writing and then to publish two new novels, conceived as a two book series with potential for more depending on the market. I don’t want to say much about the content at this point, beyond the general description of far-future high-tech science fiction.

I conceived this project as something I could accomplish fairly quickly. To that end, I wanted both novels to be relatively short, because short is faster to write, faster to edit, faster to layout in ebook and print editions.

Well, none of that worked out!

In early July I got feedback on book 1 from my freelance editor — and ouch! Her critique was harsh, but entirely fair. I’ve been revising since then. The overall plot is essentially the same. Mostly I’ve been working on the characters, changing their roles and developing subplots to add interest to the story. I think it’s greatly improved. It’s also a lot longer! And I’m not done with this draft yet. Given that it’s already October, and I need to stop work on the novel to write a short story that’s due all too soon, I’m not going to be able to get book 1 out this year as I’d originally planned. But hopefully it’ll be ready to go early in the new year.

Book 2 is presently an extremely rough first draft around 75% done.

I’ll admit there have been times I wanted to abandon this project. It’s just been so difficult to write — and I’m not even sure why. But I’ve invested too much in it to back out now — and I’ve already got terrific cover art ready to go! — so it will be finished.

Send me positive thoughts!

And do sign up for my newsletter if you haven’t already (the form is over there–> in the right-hand column). That way I can let you know when the the first book is finally out in the world — and I’ll probably do a cover-art reveal for newsletter subscribers, so there’s that.

Yes, I have made some progress since my last progress report. I’ll admit though, it’s been slow going. Here’s a tweet from last week that captures my feelings nicely:

I'm starting to think that thrashing around with the plot for two months in the middle of a first draft is JUST THE WAY IT'S DONE THESE DAYS.
It's become all too familiar.
Sigh.

— Linda Nagata (@LindaNagata) June 2, 2018

As of today, I’m around 62,000 words into the initial draft of book 2 in a duology of novels. I’m hoping that this means I’m around 2/3 done with it. Over the past few weeks, a lot of time has gone into visualizing the next section, trying to figure out how to present it while giving all the characters their proper time on the page as well as meaningful roles within the plot.

An interesting breakthrough came a few nights ago, I woke up at 1am and lay awake for a while thinking about things. I ended up jotting down a few new approaches that have proved to be quite helpful. Implementing these ideas meant dropping back in the manuscript and adding new scenes and sections. I’m still working on that, but I hope to be moving into new territory again in another day or two. And then maybe a sprint to the end? I hope so!

Some writers love first drafts and hate revising. Other writers, like me, are much happier once we have a solid draft down. I’m looking forward to the revision stage.

It’s been two-and-a-half months since I posted a progress report. Oops.

So where am I?

Well, as reported last time, my big project for this year is a duology of novels. Book 1 is “done” in the sense that it’s a good, solid, complete draft. It is now with my freelance editor, Judith Tarr, who has served as editor on my last four novels and has done a terrific job.

I’m half done with a rough draft of the second book in the set. I’ve got a good general idea of the events that will make up the second half of the novel, but figuring out the details of how things will go down has been a real challenge. For the past two or three weeks I’ve been combing through my notes, organizing and assembling a detailed chapter-oriented outline. I want to make sure that all the important characters in this volume have a significant role to play as events unfold.

Plot is always such a challenge!

That said, I feel like I need to start writing actual chapters again. I’ll probably begin that tomorrow.

My plan is to publish both books this year, probably a month or two apart. To that end, I’ve begun the process of acquiring cover art, which is always exciting and scary. So much of a book’s success depends on the cover!

Anyway, these two books together will be a complete story. There is a potential for more in the series if these first two sell well. But if they don’t, I won’t be leaving anyone hanging.

Onward!

Book sales have continued to be terrible this month. February has never been kind in this regard, but I feel I should have reached a point in my career where I can enjoy at least a little momentum in monthly sales. Alas, not there yet.

On the positive side, I’m “nearly done” with the first in a pair of novels that are my big project for this year. I’ve put book #1 aside for now and am presently focused on brainstorming book #2. It’s been fun and complicated. My usual method of starting a new novel is to try to outline as much as I can, so that’s what I’ve been doing. But I think in another day or two I’m going to try to write some actual chapters. That always has a way of revealing new ideas — and also new problems.

Another positive: I just finished some very minor edits on a short story that will be appearing in an anthology which I think is scheduled for publication later this year. It’s nice to have stuff on the way!

Even better: I just got the news that I have sold another short story!

This is a story I wrote on spec, not on invitation — and I think it will always be a thrill to have a spec story accepted by a top market. Competition in the short fiction market is intense and it never gets easier given all the brilliant new writers joining the SFF world. So it feels good to know I can still place a story.

I’ll have details for you later, but right now I’ll just say that some of my long-time readers might find this one especially interesting.