Let’s see: when last seen I was just getting over my Energy Crisis.
In good news, I’m pleased to report that my energy levels have held where they were in the first half of the year and, consequently, good progress has been made on the second draft of Forever. You will note I don’t say I’ve finished yet, I refer you to the title that grows ever more ironic with each passing day. The muse, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. It matters not: I have to press on, it’s do or die time.
I may be over-egging it a touch…
In any case, what I’ve been doing is a substantial plot change to the third act in order to remove a somewhat superfluous plot loop that would have made the book longer than it needed to be. This has made the manuscript much tighter than before but has left a ragged tear and so I’ve been repairing this cut with a full revision to the penultimate set piece*. Really without going into massive spoilers I have to leave that explanation at that level of cryptic technical detail. I reckon I’m probably about two weeks of hard graft from a finished draft. Fingers crossed.
This puts my plans for the rest of the year somewhat out of whack as I had planned to write the first draft (a somewhat easier task) of a new novel by year end. I’m unlikely to hit this target now but I want to at least have started one and so I was pretty excited to have a reasonably well formed idea land in my head as I walked to work the other day completed with a concept that is considerably less research heavy, not to mention lighter, than the present piece. I’m going to start the world building once I’m a bit closer to the end of this piece but my mind keeps noodling on the idea as I dash from place to place in the final sprint to Christmas.
Really the upshot of the state of this writer is, for the first time in along time, I’m cautiously optimistic.
That can only be a good thing…
* Yes. I applied a four-act structure in a moment of madness but it seemed like a good idea at the time.