Artifice of Power Update #5
Well, this was a rough week. Between a work project that kept me away from writing for a couple days and a lot of keeping up with my seven year old, I’m just happy to have hit 5k words this week, even though my goal was 7k. I’d hoped to have the rework I started two weeks ago done early this week and be making more forward progress for most of the week. Instead, I got that rework mostly finished on Monday, had to work at the day job all of Tuesday, finished the rework Wednesday, and had to work late again Thursday. So just tonight, right before I started writing this post, I started on forward progress again. Nothing on that is quite done, but I’m at least more sure it’s going in the right direction.
A Short Discussion of GoalsI’ve been talking a lot over the last few weeks about goals. While I’m sure anyone interested in reading my books likes to hear that I’m making progress, it’s actually really important to keep the point of the goal in perspective. I don’t care if I write seven thousand words in a given week. I care that I made some good progress on my book and can be proud of the way the story is developing.
For that reason, I’m excited about my recent rework as much as about my forward progress. It gave me the chance to rework the scene where Sayli started flirting with a random commoner. I was always going to change it, not because Sayli can’t have a crush on a commoner, but because Sayli is, in her core, a grounded and practical person. The fun of her in this story is her ability to manage a complex political situation that she is not really trained for but has prepared herself for. Sayli having a random fling is beside the point. Let’s face it…she’s probably had a couple flings already. They aren’t in the book until they cause a political impact.
There are probably a dozen little details like that in this draft of the book that still need ironed out, and more will pop up. All books need the details smoothed after drafting. But it still feels good to have had the chance to clear up a thing that bothered me. And that’s what the goals are intended for.
The goals are only useful so long as they help bring the story together into a thing I can be proud of.
I know I’ve had a few more readers in the last few weeks checking back in. I hope to be able to share something you can enjoy soon. Thanks for checking in on my work.
