Author’s Log 0803.19

I had quite a major breakthrough this week which has seen me get back to actually laying more words on paper (figuratively speaking).

The positioning and placement of the key parts of the bad guy, my antagonist, in the story had been halting my progress on Book 1, and the whole editing process had become a grind for solutions to a problem I believed I had.

Lying in bed one evening it dawned on me that my original work on this was ok, and in fact matched some key masterworks and their stories in how they addressed this very issue. It was the best sleep I’ve had in a while that night and in the morning I woke lighter as if a great weight had been removed from my shoulders.

Words are back being written and I am working through the key scenes that needed ‘beefing up’ (I wonder what a vegan version of that phrase would be?) and starting to bring some of the layers of my world into the novel.

I hadn’t realised how much time had passed since I was truly writing words and I recognise now that even if I am researching and editing a book, I also need to be laying down words for another story at the same time to keep my writing hand in. So now I will make sure I am first drafting the rest of Book 2 if I get stuck resolving conceptual issues again.

Key Work of late:

• writing words. yes real words back into scenes to improve them
• heaps of research reading around disabilities in medieval and similar periods
• research into some old crafts from early years
• a little bit of world building for the map of Book 2 & 3 which isn’t included in my current map.