Archives (page 5 of 37)

Sorting Out the Plot

7/2: 187 words. While I didn’t make a lot of writing progress yesterday, I did figure out the premise of the story I’m writing. I have been working on it for a couple of weeks with only the vaguest of ideas of what I want it to be. But this morning, while cleaning the house, I finally figured out what this new novel, Casual Business with Fairies, is about. I rode a pretty nice high for much of the day after that revelation. Now I can’t wait to see if it turns out like I’ve outlined.

Vulcan Rising Is Free from July 1-7

For a limited time, you can get Vulcan Rising free at Apple Books, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and directly from me at Payhip. Go here to choose your preferred retailer. The first trilogy of The Zauberi Chronicles closes with the release of Forging Bonds on September 20.

Pick up Vulcan Rising now so you’ll have time to read it and Seeking Sanctuary before the release of the third book.

vulcan rising the zauberi chronicles free

Closing out June

6/30: 360 words. Most of my words this morning went toward creating a new appendix in Write Your Novel One Day at a Time (link) for writing and creativity resources. A friend of mine suggested I add this after reading an advance copy. So while I was at it, I added the information to my author website as well, Writing and Creativity Resources.

The first half of June involved a great deal of editing, rather than writing. It took a lot of time to edit and revise the transcriptions of the interviews that make up part of Write Your Novel One Day at a Time. After finishing the editing, I spent several days trying to figure out what to do next.

It wasn’t until June 18 that I landed on the new story that I’m writing about fairies, and began writing more consistently again. I finished June with 6,944 words for the month, and I have accumulated 86,444 words for 2022 so far. Even with having edited two books in the last two months, I’m still well ahead of pace for my goal of 100,000 words for the year.

Plotting the Course for the New Novel

6/29: 458 words. I’ve written over 5,000 words of the new novel about insidious fairies, and I still don’t know where it’s going. It reminds me very much of how Seeking Sanctuary went, when I couldn’t figure out my antagonist for a long time.

I spent some time this morning creating the beginnings of the outline for this novel. At the very least, I (think I) know how the first six chapters will go. Beyond that, we’ll just have to see.

I don’t know how “panters” or “discovery writers” write this way. For me it creates too much anxiety not knowing which direction things are headed.

Some Writing Days Are Just Fun

6/27: 682 words. While driving home from our family vacation, I thought through the scene that I wrote this morning. I already knew it line-by-line. So when it came time to write it, the words just poured onto the page. There were a few lines of dialogue that surprised me, but otherwise it came out just as I envisioned it. A rare enough occurrence in its own write. Not all writing days are fun, but this one was.

Finding the Next Project

When I finished the first draft of Forging Bonds in early May, I thought I knew what my next fiction writing project would be. I was pretty sure I was going to finish one of the novels that I had been working on before I started The Zauberi Chronicles. But I was wrong.

Once I realized, that book wasn’t the story I wanted to tell right now, I didn’t know what I was going to work on. I wrote a few scenes in a horror story that I outlined, but it’s so dark and grim that I don’t know if I’ll write it. Then I outlined part of a murder mystery/suspense story that I want to write, but didn’t get beyond the outlining stage.

Then a tried of mine said a peculiar thing about why they don’t do the tooth fairy thing at her house. A phrase she use lodged itself in my brain. Several weeks after the conversation, the phrase sprouted a story. Now I’m several chapters into that story. I have only the vaguest notions of what the story is about so far. I guess I’ll be figuring it out as I write, which is different than my normal course.

The biggest difficulty in writing the tooth fairy book so far was deciding what perspective to write it from. All of The Zauberi Chronicles books were third person with multiple POV characters. But that didn’t feel write for this book. I wrote the first chapter in both first and third person to see which one felt right.

First person won the day. It’s a bit of a different writing experience, but I’ve used it before in my short story “The Murder Tree” (Amazon link). It should be fun, and I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes.

Here’s the Word Count Chronicles version of what this has looked like so far:

  • 6/14: 300 words (Chapter 1)
  • 6/18: 391 words (Chapter 1)
  • 6/22: 170 words (Chapter 1)
  • 6/23: 375 words (Chapter 1)
  • 6/24: 520 words (Chapter where the protagonist meets the mentor)
  • 6/25: 429 words (Chapter where the protagonist meets the mentor)
  • 6/26: 551 words (Second encounter between protagonist and mentor)

Oh, I also finished my non-fiction book about getting your creative work done: Wrote Your Novel One Day at a Time: How to Write a Novel While Having a Career, a Family, and a Life. The book releases on 11/1, but you can pre-order the e-book at your favorite online stores.

Finally, an update on my goal of writing 100,000 words for the year — I’m presently sitting at 83,821. It’s been a really productive year so far.

Finishing the First Draft of Forging Bonds

5/2: 954 words. I didn’t expect to finish today, but the 3YO woke up crying about 15 minutes before my alarm was set to go off. So I got her resettled and decided there wasn’t any point in laying back down. I took a quick shower and jumped back into the story. I really thought I would finish tomorrow or the next day, but the extra minutes gave me just enough time to finish the final chapter.

The first draft of the novel has it coming in at 73,988 words. I don’t yet know whether I’ll end up adding or subtracting more during the editing process. This is the longest novel to date, by a couple of thousand words. And I expect it to remain so.

This also brings my yearly word count to 67,378, which is far more than I would have imagined for this early in the year. It’s probably good that I’m so far ahead of schedule. Before I start editing this book, I have another project to edit for a children’s book that I’m planning to publish with Scarlet Oak Press.

Writing the Final Chapter

5/1: 556 words. Early in the writing of Forging Bonds, I planned to finish it by late May. Barring some catastrophe, I’ll be a couple weeks ahead of schedule when I finish this later in the week. And I can tell you that I’m already enjoying the tone of the final chapter in the trilogy.

Update: I wrote another 485 words this afternoon and brought myself to nearly the mid-point of the chapter (at least structurally, if not literally).

Negative Word Count

4/30: -15 words. Despite having one chapter left to write, I did some editing work today. At the end of it, when I checked Scrivener for how many words I’d written, I was in the red.

Finishing the Penultimate Chapter

4/29: 692 words. I finished the last of the climactic chapters. Then I realized that the chapter I had slotted after it was totally superfluous. Which means, I finished the penultimate chapter without realizing it. I only have one chapter left to write, and then I’ll be done with the first draft of Forging Bonds.