Slogging Diligently

Crass Casualty, Book II in the Victoria da Vinci series, is coming into focus. Still on track for a November release.

(What? You haven't read the first book yet?)

For me, this is the most difficult stage of the process .

I call it the "Connect-the-Dots" phase: the chapter outlines have been populated with a paragraph here, a paragraph there, a few full sentences floating like islands, a fragment or two, some images, a scattering of single words, a few short reminders to myself. I.e., [Victoria says something clever.] The first part of the "Connect-the-Dots" phase is to write the language that links each of these pieces into a logical and grammatical unit, expanding stubs into fleshed-out scenes, inflating an adjective into a description, getting a character from one room to another, shifting the topic of conversation from A to B without an obvious jolt. Transitions are the hardest thing in fiction writing. The second part is to comb back through it to make it all flow smoothly. (Did I really use the word "varnished" three times?)

Later, I will return to it and do another round of edits, but that phase is relatively easy — I'm just fixing mistakes.

The last phase is the final cleanup, where I try to make it pop and sparkle. Again, that's fun, because the elements are all there. It's just a matter of tweaking and tightening.

But right now, deep in the "Connect-the-Dots" phase, I have to force myself to

JUST.

KEEP.

GOING.