Progress and Submission Reports

[Silk]

Rocks fall, everybody dies, death comes raining from the skies...

[Chaos]

I wrote 2800 words on Rebirth. Holy crap, you're amazed.

[Flo_the_G]

I just finished the first draft of Concord. Yay! Now I have 409 pages (almost 130k words) worth of confusion, deliberate inconsistencies and irrelevant subplots, not to mention a plot that sort of shifts focus towards the middle, and then completely derails towards the end.

Mind you, I have pages upon pages of notes, and a fairly good idea of how to fix this. I'm confident I could get a second draft to work, to a point where one could actually read it without scratching holes into one's head.

Alas, I also have at least one other idea that is developed enough that I could realistically pursue it, laying the basis for which would probably be only slightly more work than making an outline for a rewrite of Concord. Besides, I could immediately put all the nifty things I learnt to work, now that I know what doesn't.

I tried asking myself what Jesus would do, but I don't particularly like wine, so I thought I'd ask you folks instead. Do I give Concord a well-earned rest and leave it to gestate in my subconscious while I do something else, or do I press on until its done before I allow myself to embark to new shores?

Now that the initial elation has worn off, my mind is paralysed by indecision while the rest of me is listening to wartime songs and eating a bag of crisps. This does not bode well.

[Silk]

Congratulations!

Personally, I would lean more towards finishing another book first. (This is what I did after finishing the Ringing Horn. Of course, I haven't finished a second book yet...) You learn a whole lot from finishing that first book, and time away from a draft is definitely helpful.

Then again, if you already have some specific things in mind to change in Concord, time away might not be that essential now; you can always fix the things that you already know are wrong with it, then come back to it later and see if you can find other things wrong with it.

And of course, if you wake up one day with a deep-burning desire to work on one or the other, you should do that.

[Stormblessed]

I have started work on what will hopefully be my first completed piece. I have several partially written stories, and many more ideas which lack substantial plot to turn into a story, but hopefully this is about to change. 

The working title of my story will be Perfection. No, this is not a comment on how good I think my story is (in fact at the moment I think it is quite bad). The story is in fact a fantasy murder mystery, and the original idea for the story was based around a serial killer searching for the perfect murder. Of course, this story has changed drastically from the original idea, but the murderer is still a perfectionist, and seeks perfection, so I thought I would keep the name.

Well, here goes. About to start Perfection  V2 (Version 2. I didn't like version 1, so I am doing a re-write, but I like to keep all past versions just in case I decide to reuse an idea).

[Renoard]

I've had a lot going on. My dad got very ill, and I was one of two full time caregivers. Previously I had been part time mostly offering adult daycare etcetera. But he had a fall and was severely abused while in hospital. We caught it an pulled him out so we could care for him at home, but not before the damage was unrecoverable. He passed on a few weeks ago and I've been decompressing. In the middle of this my laptop that I use as my main home computer died an unnatural death and I have been trying to rebuild my life from scraps left hither and yon.

I submitted my first novel El Shaddu over the threshold at a major publisher and when I didn't hear back from then within the time they allot for that, I resubmitted with a free-lance acquisitions editor at another house.

In all that I finished a short story set in the world on my novel El Shaddu. It's not ready for PG audiences, a bit violent etc.

And I've written 30% of a new novel (the rest is in outline format).

Started a new blog about the foibles of trying to get published.

I've also written a couple of short "faerie tales." I maintain that real people have fantasy lives. Just because characters live in a fantasy world doesn't mean they won't fantasize themselves, so I have written these tales from the perspective of the characters in my new novel. It helps me characterize them more strongly and the tales aren't a bad read from our perspective either.

[Chaos]

Hey guys and gals. Here's my progress report: I'm alive! Isn't that thrilling? Apologies for my absence. I'm busy with schoolwork, doing 17th Shard and its Mistborn RP. Wee, fan fiction.

On my novel's front, Rebirth has become my honors thesis, which means I'll actually have to complete it now. It's fairly exciting stuff! My new outline is making the book much more solid.