Windmills and Whales

Wow, I just looked and realized that it has been almost a month since my last post. I guess writing posts is really, really hard for me. How ironical.

A lot has happened since the last post. The revision and editing and re-revision of book 2 has been almost as extensive as the initial draft itself. I have written more than three hundred pages of revised story, and cut away almost five hundred pages from the initial manuscript over the last three months. It has been one dozy of a ride.

Hindsight shows me clearly that I fell into a very sophomore trap. With The Martyr’s Blade between covers, I launched on a very ambitious book 2, confident that my “veteran” writing skills could land that fish/harpoon that whale/skewer that windmill. The story-telling was not hard. The writing was not hard. But taming all of that into one story was difficult. It was far too epic, far too expansive. The threads far too disparate. And simply managing it was mind-numbing. Simple edits took hours as I tracked down the repercussions.

Luckily, pruning is always easier than stuffing. Removing two of the three major plot arcs and giving the remaining one the extra love and attention it deserved gave me a chance to find the real story. It just took time to do it. And then it had to be re-edited. And those edits revised.

So that is how we arrived where we are, today. I am awaiting final edits, and revising as they arrive so that it will be ready to read as soon as possible. Only 150 pages to go!