Progress Report: 5/31/11

I want to go back.

Still coming out of my post-New York coma, so I'll be (relatively) brief …

Copies of the Ed Kemmick book, The Big Sky, By and By , have been bundled up for reviewers and will go out this week. Release date is July 26.
I'm plug, plug, plugging away at the new novel project. This is all a little inside baseball, so if that's not your cup of tea, go here for something more interesting. … OK, still here? I'm trying something new with this book. I have a basic idea of where it's going to go, but I'm outlining only a few scenes at a time — four or five. Once those are written, I assess where the story is and consider new threads that have emerged — those always happen — and then sketch out a few more scenes. With 600 Hours of Edward and The Summer Son , I plotted a bit more aggressively at the outset, and while I'm happy with both books, they perhaps missed a little bit of the spontaneity that I'm experiencing with this project. It's kept the slogging — that awful point in a first draft where you're several thousand words in and have many thousands yet to go — from being a total drag.
I hope you're keeping up with my weekly project, The Word. I'm having a ton of fun with that. You can also see the stories at my page on Fictionaut.