The Good

I hit just over an additional 2000 words for this week. About a third of them ended up in the latest chapter: Interlude the 1st: Downtime. I usually write in the same sequence that I (currently) have the plot. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but then little about writing seems to have hard and fast rules. Research focused around military organizations and actions in the past decade or so, specifically for the background of a new character for the book: Witchwolf Shaman.

The Bad

The majority of the work, about two-thirds, were edits to the previous chapters -Prologue and Chapters 1-3. I wasn’t tracking it that closely, but after all was said and done, I’m certain my net word count was less than 2000 words. At least for now, though, I’m concentrating on habits and progressing the story. I’m not going to get wrapped around the axle straining to hit a net word count. I’ve given myself a “budget” of 90K to 110K words for the second book, significantly more than Orchids Ablaze, but each of those words should move some aspect of the story along, not simply pad the story to meet an arbitrary word count.

The Ugly?

Let’s just say the “downside” is having to relearn tools that I haven’t used since the last book. I still do quite a bit of work on plain engineering graph paper, especially floor plans and diagrams, and remembering the software to translate those into digital format can be challenging (i.e. frustrating) since I don’t use drawing software all the time. And, self-reporting again, I still haven’t pulled together the paperback template for Orchids Ablaze. The farther I get into the second book, I find it less interesting going back to the first.

Ah, what an interesting endeavour is writing…

DDW