State of Writing Updates

Drew’s periodic “State of Writing” updates, with information on the various projects he’s working on.

All Flames Cast NaNo Update – Weeks 2 and 3

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Well, last week didn’t really go as planned. I hit a major wall with All Flames Cast, and the result is that I am now way off my mark for getting to 90,000 words this month. I had a pretty big day on Saturday, trying to get back on track, but I still have a lot of ground to make up.

A big reason for this is where in the book I am. The parts I’m writing right now are smack dab in the middle: mostly exposition and character-building and setting up for the fun stuff at the end. The problem is, it’s easy to find myself rambling during stretches like these. I have had to consciously prevent myself from letting my characters go down tangents, even when it provides worldbuilding, because I need that page space to be spent moving the plot forward and helping the characters grow. I don’t want this to turn into a 250,000 word monstrosity. If I can keep the word total around 150,000 words, which was my goal from the beginning, I will be very happy.

So, as this third week of NaNo gets going, I find myself with a lot of work to do. All Flames Cast goes on, but we will see if I can really get to 90,000 words now. It was always a daunting goal.

All Flames Cast NaNo Update – Week 1

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We’re officially one week into NaNoWriMo. I’m in a bit of an interesting spot with it, at this point. I totally missed Days 1 and 2, but splurged these last couple days to catch up to the pace I want. If I were going for the 50,000 word count, I’d be pretty much set. At over 16,000 words, I would be very happy with that progress.

Unfortunately, I’m aiming for almost twice the normal number. I really want to finish All Flames Cast this month. With today being the first of my “Surge Days”, I’m beginning to see the enormity of the task at hand. I have done a little over 7000 of the 10,000 I want for today so far, and it’s been draining. It’s gonna be tough to meet this goal. I just have to hope that the momentum of things carries on, and I can pack it all in.

On a happier note, I do have to say that I’m enjoying this different writing experience. While I’m writing this book straight through, one character at a time, by nature that means that the narrative pacing is going to be uneven, at least for how I’m writing it. Right now, I’m getting close to finishing Harael’s story. The chapters I’ve been working on are fast, action-packed, and have a lot of intense emotion. It’s going to be weird, once I finish his arc and move on to Tymun’s…because I’ll be going from writing climax chapters straight back to writing setup chapters. The pacing shock there might take some getting used to, but I’m planning on the personal momentum of finishing an arc to carry me through the earlier Tymun stuff that I need to rewrite.

Either way, check back in next week for the Week 2 update. Between now and then, I think I’m going to be posting a book review, so keep an eye out for that!

NaNoWriMo – All Flames Cast Edition

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As many of you know, November is National Novel Writing Month. Now, I’ve never participated in NanNoWriMo in the traditional sense before. I’m usually immersed in a project already—as I am now—and I prefer to move at my own pace. I’m not the fastest writer in the world, and I generally like my first drafts to be cleaner than usual. It takes time.

However, this year I’ll be undertaking a kind of NaNo of my own: finishing All Flames Cast this month! This is a pretty big goal, and I’m already starting behind the ball a bit, as I was out of town and away from my computer for most of the weekend. As of this writing, I’ve written about 2,400 words so far in November; to finish All Flames Cast, it looks like I’m going to need to do about 80,000-90,000 words. That’s a lot, but I can bear down when I need to. Broken down into 3,000 words a day, it looks a lot more manageable.

I’ve also already planned out several of what I’m calling “Surge Days”, where I cleared my schedule and I’m setting a goal of 10,000 words. With those, I’m confident that I can meet my goal.

In celebration of the end (hopefully) being in sight, another, final, Harael chapter will be going up later today. I haven’t fully decided yet, but there is a good chance I will start posting more Tymun chapters in the future, but if that happens, I’m guessing that won’t be until the end of this month or in early December. There will be more updates coming as the month goes on.

Anyway, good luck to all of you NaNo people out there, and happy writing!

Drew’s State of Writing – October 2014

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It’s been nine months since my last State of Writing update. Back in January, I talked about a lot of the future projects I have planned, and about how I was getting pretty close to finishing All Flames Cast. That…ended up being very wrong. That, among other developments, has me where I am now.

First, All Flames Cast. If you’ve been keeping up with things around here lately, you know that several more chapters have popped up. Continue reading

Drew’s State of Writing – January 2014

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The past year or so has been a busy one, for a few reasons (not insignificant among them being my graduation from college), and my writing has gone in some pretty drastic spurts. I’ve recently been in the midst of a big push, after spending a couple months off while reading far too much. The result is that I’ve got some pretty big plans for the next year or so, and even beyond that.

The first big news is that Seeds of Doubt has now been changed to All Flames Cast as the working title for the first Burning Shadows book. While Seeds of Doubt is a great title for describing the actual goings on in the book, I have never really liked it; I think it’s too cliché. So, All Flames Cast is what I’m going with for the time being. I’ve been at work on this one for about a year and a half now, and I’m nearing completion on the first draft. I will be posting another chapter or two on here in the coming days, to continue the first three that I posted about a year ago.

Now, Burning Shadows is a big project for me. Continue reading