Artifice of Power Update # 15

So being late on my updates is becoming a habit. Let’s just all collectively agree that I’ll get an update out on Saturdays… Sometime. Actually, I should be a lot more reliable about my updates come late September because that will be after the end of my publishing course that I am taking to improve my distribution of my books. But for now…I had a bit of a rough week. between the course, a lot of work for the day job, and an open house for my kiddo, I only managed just over 5,300 words last week.

I’ve previously mentioned that 5k words per week isn’t really slow (consider, for example, that reliably writing 5k words per week drafts a 160k word novel in about eight months, which is lightning fast for some epic fantasy authors). It is, however, slow for me, and it’s evidence that I had two days where I just couldn’t quite get things moving and only managed 300 words, one day where I was too busy to get any writing done at all, and another where I was a couple hundred short of my goal. Still, progress is being made, and I have some new highlights to share.

Saylina got invested in some imperial politics beyond just what she needs for her home provinceMy new POV character for this book is building some interesting add-ons to the events, which I’m pretty excited aboutKilasha is about to find something very concerning and I’m not quite sure how he’s going to react. I think he’s going to do something very unusual for him.Looking Forward… Some more

A quick note on upcoming edits. It’s clear to me now that this early draft suffers from a particular recurring issue, which is going to require additional edits after this draft is done. The good news is that, having identified the problem, I can address it in edits and writing forward. The bad news is, this problem is prevalent enough that I’m concerned edits may take more time than expected. I’m not saying six extra months of edits, but I had a plan to be editing and drafting at the same time, and this may mean “editing” becomes “redrafting”, which would make drafting new content a lot harder. This said, I am still hopeful that I have the time to fix the problem early and avoid delaying my original rapid release plan for next year. I’ll always prioritize a higher quality book over meeting a deadline, but I’m definitely making plans to solve this editing need without too many delays. I want these books out where readers can enjoy them!