Almost done the re-write!
For anyone who’s been wondering what the heck happened to me recently, the answer is pretty simple: I’ve been writing. As you may know, I’ve been working on the sequel to my first novel, Imminent Danger And How to Fly Straight into It, for a couple of months now, and sometime around last week I just got struck with this incredible fervor to write. And so I did. And now the end is in sight!
According to my hilariously poor attempt at a “chapter outline”, Chasing Nonconformity is going to be 47 chapters long, plus an epilogue. Presumably this will change once I cut it down a bit, as it’s sitting at 125k words and that is most definitely too long for a YA novel! Anyhoo, I’m currently on chapter 42, which makes me almost done! Huzzah!
That’s the good news. The bad news is that I’m completely re-writing the last part of the book, so this is all going to be writing from scratch–i.e., I can’t take what I had before and shift it around a bit to have it fit in with the book’s new direction. But that’s okay. Writing is fun!
Oh, and then I obviously still have to go back and take care of a whole bunch of nitpicky things. For one, the main character Eris switches outfits constantly despite only having access to one outfit. So that’s going to take some figuring. For another, this is a sci-fi book, and although I thoroughly explain a lot of important world-building concepts in the first book, I haven’t actually inserted those explanations in the second book, so I’ll have to go back and figure out a way to work those in. The life of an author never grows dull, my friends!
That’s all for now. Just checking in to let everyone know how it’s going. Wish me luck on the final chapters, and I’ll report back when the re-write is complete!!!
Unrelated media of the day:
This may sound silly, but I’ve recently started listening to “zen” music while I write, and it’s absolutely fabulous for getting stuff done. Something about it just puts you in an awesome frame of mind for creating. At least, that’s what I’ve found! So light some candles, brew some tea, put on this Youtube video as background, and see if it helps your writing process! And if it puts you to sleep, well … even writers have to sleep sometime.
