Book 2 Progress Update!

It's been slow up to this point, but I wanted to give everyone an update on how the recovery of book two of The Gemquist Chronicles is going!

As you know, I fell victim to one of the classic blunders. In addition to never getting involved in a land war in Asia or going in against a Sicilian when death is on the line, one should also always double check your back-ups!! However, since I didn't, I am now in the position of having to completely rewrite book two. This has been a very painful process, but, I'm really excited to announce that progress has been made!

Current word count is just over 8k which, while a far cry away from the 115k that I lost, is actually very encouraging as 1.6k of that was written in just one day. This gives me hope that the story is started to flow smoothly again and that I'm regaining my writing momentum. Before the incident, I was regularly writing 1k-3k words a day; afterwards, it was like pulling teeth to even get a few hundred written. I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream, and I wanted to write but the words just would not come. Some authors meticulously plan out every novel down to the last detail. I, however, am not one of those authors. I've tried, but outlining and character sheets simply don't work for me. I'm what's called a 'pantser,' someone who 'writes by the seat of their pants.' And it works well for me....... at least most of the time. The beginning of a story is quite often the hardest part for me. It's almost like a game of chess, before you can start to play the game, you have to put all the pieces in place on the board. Only, as a pantser, it sometimes feels like you are doing this blindfolded and first have to find where your pieces are in order to put them in their place and start to move them and they aren't always where you'd expect them to be.

With my recent writing success, I'm excited that, maybe, it won't take as long as I'd anticipated for me to reclaim what I'd lost. I have never been more thankful that God has blessed me with an incredibly good memory for story details. The first time through, it took me over 2 years to reach the point I was at because I didn't all of my plot points yet as writing for me is like reading a book for the first time. I've read the synopsis so I know the gist of the story, but I don't know how things are going to unfold. This time though, I've already solved those questions and know what happens so it's more like coming back to an old favorite: I know the characters, I know the story, I just need my memory refreshed on all the finer details. I remember all of my plot points and the timeline. It's the wording of it all that I don't remember and have to recreate with what feels right this time through.

Anyways, that's where things are at right now and I'll keep you updated on how things are going!