It occurs to me that this blog is supposed to help you keep track of where I am on my novels, but it's kind of hard for you to do that if I don't post updates once in a while!
So here goes ...
The fifth novel, which does not have a title that I want to share yet, has a long way to go. This weekend I finally started to break part of it into chapters so that it's not just one big lump of story. I've done some other minor formatting, but it doesn't have headers yet.
The biggest problem is the story itself. I had a story written, but it's too short and the beginning is horribly boring. Because of this, I decided I needed to add something to the beginning, and that's where I've gotten myself in trouble. It turns out that it's very hard to add onto the beginning of a story because you have to come up with stuff that not only fits in with what's already written but also doesn't mess with the themes or give away anything that's coming later in the story. That's hard!
I also find that it's hard to write toward something that's finished. In other words, I'm used to writing with no particular ending in mind, which gives me a lot more freedom. Right now, I'm limited on where the story can go or what the characters can do, and that's had a negative effect on the writing itself. I wrote myself into several dead ends and had to backtrack to get where I wanted to be.
I like most of what I've written and I think I can make all of this work, but there's still a lot to be done. Because of that, I'm not very far along. I'm sorry to say that, because it makes a potential reader a little exasperated, I'm sure.
I am working on it, though! I spent quite a bit of time this weekend on the novel, which felt incredibly good after my long bout of writer's block, so I'm confident that this novel will see the light of day.
We'll just have to see when I can finish it, but I think that's a lot better than having to see if it will happen.
In the meantime, if you'd post a review of any of my novels, I'd really appreciate it! Please be honest if you do so. You can post a review on Amazon, Goodreads or wherever you prefer.
Thanks! And thanks for reading my blog.
