This is a short one. As am I.
The month’s been markedly more busy than I intended and so progress, while steady, has been slow.
By far my main focus is still the second draft manuscript for Forever. The structural changes continue to ripple through the rest of the book like a classic example of chaos theory. I flip between finding this annoying because of the delay and being quite pleased because it means the book does have a coherent structure because you can’t just move things round easily.
In the meantime, I have written some first draft short stories that I need to work on and I have begun some note-taking for the next book. I can tell that I am getting frustrated with the redraft of Forever because I keep getting the hankering to go do new stuff and normally I like to keep two projects on the go so that I can flit back and forth. I’m resisting at the moment because I would really like to finish the rewrite some time before the wedding.
The other, really useful, thing I have been doing is reading Tobias Buckell’s Nascence. It’s a fascinating book that details seventeen of his short stories that failed and describes why each story doesn’t work and what he learned from the process. I’m about half way through but I really am finding it useful as I go through my own redraft process because it’s making me stop and think about the reader.
That’s it for now. More posts soon.