The Blank of Veridon

Well, I've started the long work of hammering out a plot for the next book. It feels weird because this one isn't technically done; there are edits to do and maybe some more revision. But that's all out of my hands for now, and rather than sitting around and staring at walls, I'm doing the book two thing.

What's strangest about it is that I've spent so long with the previous work. Producing the final plot for the last book was a real effort. I sketched out an idea and started writing. At some point I realized I was going in circles, revised, and rewrote. Then I realized that I was just churning my wheels again, revised, rewrote. More feedback, major revision, rewrite. And once that part of the manuscript was done, there were a couple rounds of major revision. In all it took a little over two years to get the final form in place. I don't want to go through that again. Honestly, who would?

So the trick this time is to try to get the initial plot summary as close to the final as I can. I know more about plot now than I did two years ago, but this is no guarantee of quality. Spotting mistakes doesn't necessarily mean you can fix them. I don't want to spend too much time with the initial summary, here, because I'm at my best when I'm actually writing the characters and scenes. I learn a lot about the story by just writing the story. I don't think I'm alone in that. Still, I don't want to sit through eight rounds of figuring out the order of events, taking events out, etc. For the first book, the final manuscript is around 93k words. Over the course of the revisions, the scrapped drafts and the last round of corrections, I'd estimate that I wrote maybe 250k words. That's just not efficient.

Anyway. I'm working on it. I'll be out of town for a while, so maybe I'll get something done on it. That'd be nice.

I have a title, though! It's a good title. I won't tell you now, but I'm sure you'll find out eventually. All three of you.