Drew’s periodic “State of Writing” updates, with information on the various projects he’s working on.
And so we approach the end of another year.
In many ways, 2016 was a great year for me, personally. I hit some major life milestones in the past twelve months, not the least of which were getting engaged and buying a condo. All in all, it was a successful year on that count.
But on the writing side, 2016 was much more of a failure. I hoped to achieve a few things, none of which got done. Continue reading
I sat down and worked on On the Strings of Oblivion last night. I’m still trying to let that settle in. It’s been over a month since I last did anything at all with it. My writing muscles feel weak and out of place. Creative gears are rusty and don’t like turning. Being bitten by the writing bug tends to leave me sore.
And it feels great. Continue reading
Big things have been afoot in the Chronicle of the Sons plan, lately.
As I mentioned in various earlier State of Writing posts, the plan for CotS has been for four books, with Of Genesis coming second and going over the same timeline as All Flames Cast, but from the POVs of some of the antagonists. As I set out to outline this, things started pretty smoothly. I got through an almost complete checkpoint list, and wrote a couple of character sketch scenes to help get a feel for the new POVs.
And that’s where I hit a wall. With one notable exception (we’ll revisit this in a bit), none of the characters excited me. I didn’t want to write them. Their stories didn’t feel right. On top of that, I realized that doing this as a second book would completely derail the narrative momentum built up at the end of AFC. Continue reading
So it’s been barely a month since my last State of Writing update, where I talked about my plans for the coming year and the beginning of work on Magisterium. I was very excited (still am) to get started on that book, since it was one of my favorite ideas.
However, it’s been quickly dawning on me that Magisterium needs to take a back seat for now. I did a bunch of worldbuilding this fall, and started writing the first draft. As of right now, Magisterium sits at just over 6000 words—and the spark just isn’t there. I’m going to be revisiting this book in the future, but it’s clear that I need to do some more work on this outline and get things together better.
Where that spark is is back with Chronicle of the Sons. I’m underway on revisions for All Flames Cast, which remains top priority, but my thoughts have been increasingly bent toward the sequels. It has become obvious to me that I need to go with what feels right, and at this time that means Book 2, Of Genesis. Even just considering writing this book has me excited, which is how it should be. I just can’t get away from these characters and this world. The tale must go on.
It’s once again time for my semi-annual State of Writing Update. This serves the dual purpose of letting all of you wonderful readers know what I’m getting up to when I’m, say, slacking on my WoT reread posts or forgetting to do Books of the Week, as well as providing myself with a touchstone to get my agenda in order.
If you’ve followed these in the past, you’ll notice a theme: I generally go way, way off my intended schedule. Sadly, that’s sort of the reality of being a writer who also works a full-time job. Sometimes life gets in the way, and sometimes new things pop up and demand me to write them.
This update, thankfully, doesn’t feature too much of that. Continue reading
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