science fiction and fantasy author

Category: shaede

I might be crazy

A couple of days ago, I had an epiphany.

I was about 50k into this draft of Shaede, and finding myself frustrated, though I couldn’t really figure out why.  I was doing some reading and it hit me – the damn thing was in the wrong point of view.

I tend to always write in third person for novels.  I don’t know why.  I just do.  And I think, for this series, third just doesn’t work.  So I sat down and hammered out a rough rewrite of the first chapter in first person, asked for a few opinions.

Yeah.  It needs to be in first person.

This is going to add on rewriting of what I already have, and probably at least another draft or two to really get Sy’s voice right.  But it’s been flowing really well, and I’ve been seriously looking forward to sitting down and writing every day.

Most days lately I’ve been struggling to get to 1k words, checking and rechecking my word count as I meandered up to my daily word count goal of 2k.  These days three days, working in first person, I blink and I’m at 2k.

Today has been a bit harder, because I’m randomly fatigued (probably weather changes, since there’s a cyclone bearing down up north) and pain levels are higher than lately, but I still got to 2.6k in a session and may come back to finish off the 4k chapter later on today.

I might be crazy, but this is working and it’s right.

Sometimes life has other plans

First of all, a heads up that there is a group interview with some of the Bloodstones authors (including me) live at Erin Underwood’s blog, Underworlds.

Secondly, I know I have been somewhat absent about these parts.  I burned out pretty hard after finishing the draft of Never, both  physically and mentally.   I started to get sick, and kept getting sick with recurrent respiratory infections (I’m having to pause to cough and splutter here while typing).  The kid got sick, too, and so did the husband, both with a pretty nasty flu.

I tried to work on a few short stories, without success, then tried to do some novel outlining.  It got to the point where I could barely string a sentence together, and I was cringing every time I thought of reading.

It’s kind of ridiculous how long it takes to recognise that depression is taking over again.

I had been trying, with some success, to come off medication.  I guess that success was short-lived, because I’m now back on the meds and feeling much more motivated about everything.  I’ve been reading again, and am working on getting back in the writing groove.

I’ve admitted that the current novel I’ve been trying to outline, Wintersun (previously entitled The White Raven) isn’t quite ready to come forth yet.  I have a bunch of research I need to do, and in the meanwhile, I’ve unearthed an old novel of mine, Shaede, to work on again.  It’s an exercise in seeing how much I’ve developed as a writer, if nothing else.  Not sure what the plan is going to be with this one, but for now, it’s fun being back in that world again.

 

 

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