Keeping deadlines and rethinking priorities

It’s not Theadia I’m worried about, actually. It’s A Division of Souls. Against my better judgement, I’m going to try to get the “remastered” version of my first novel ready for an early September release for its tenth anniversary. That gives me about nine months to get my butt in gear and get it done. Can I do it?

Well, I’m reasonably sure I can do it, at any rate. It’s not as if I’m completely rewriting the whole thing! As I’ve mentioned before, this revision that I’m calling a ‘remaster’ is merely updating a story I’ve spent several years on, and want to update it so it fits my current level of quality. I’m not embarrassed by it, but I can definitely see places where I could have done a lot better work on it.

At the same time, I worry that Theadia will fall by the wayside again. That won’t happen if I don’t let it, of course. I just have to shift priorities. Besides, I want to do that novel justice, and right now it still feels like it still contains a lot of gaps that need filling. [I mean, aside from its still being unfinished at this time.] The two projects are very similar in scope, I think. Both are Big Stories with an extended cast, featuring events that affect not just the main characters but everyone around them.

Both are also stories where I wanted to make some kind of statement. The Bridgetown Trilogy is about listening to and trusting the true spirit within — in short, trusting yourself, your instincts, and your emotions. Theadia is about wanting to do the right thing not only for your own benefit but for others — in short, understanding the consequences of your actions. And I feel that for both statements, I can’t really allow the stories to be half-assed.

This is definitely going to stress me out a bit in the next few months, but if I take it day by day, keep to my deadlines and stay focused, I shouldn’t have anything to worry about.

Deadlines and Detox

dragonball fight
If only I could deal with my deadlines that way…

Hey all!

As you’ve noticed, it’s nearing the end of June and I’m ever so slightly off on my deadline to get In My Blue World finished.  And I’ve already decide that I’ll be spending most of July revising said novel and preparing it for self-publication.

Which means that I’ve decided to put myself in Do Not Disturb status on social media.  Or as I often call it, detox.  I’ll still be posting here at B-Town and over at WiS at my normal schedule, so never fear!  You’ll still be getting all the twice-weekly blathering I know you all enjoy from me.  I’m just going to be hiding from Twitter and Facebook for a while so I can focus purely on the novel revision and not get distracted.  Especially given the news cycles lately, it’s probably for the best that I back away from the fires and keep a cooler head while dealing with this deadline of mine.

Wish me luck!

Let’s Try That Again, Shall We?

high fidelity bruce

Best Laid Plans were once again thwarted, and I’m pretty sure it was because they weren’t Best Laid after all.  I seem to have forgotten to take into account vacation days off, busy Day Job days, and other events.  But that’s okay!  I’m back, we have nothing of import on the schedule for the next few weeks — in fact, I have today off and other than going around the corner to go see Napping Princess at the 4-Star, I have the entire day to get caught up on things.  Sounds good to me!

[Update: My movie plan was not so much thwarted but delayed today.  As you may have heard, there are currently some nasty wildfires burning north of us, and late last night much smoke drifted our way.  This caused me to barely get any sleep, so I wasn’t really up to seeing a film today.  Perhaps next weekend if it’s still there!]

One good thing that’s come out of this sort of thing is that I no longer feel like a failure.  Sure, the frustration of going past deadline and not hitting my goals as quickly as I’d like is still there, but Everything Is Not Ruined Forever.  Just gotta get up, brush myself off, and start again.

I’m nearing the end of the first draft of Meet the Lidwells and I hope to get it done by the end of this month, at which time I’ll start revisions.  I’m not sure how long that’ll be, but hopefully I can give it a quick turnaround (there won’t be nearly as much triage as I had with the trilogy) and get it out by the end of the year.  Here’s to hoping!

Onward and upward.  Only way to go!

Current Status: Almost There

sw almost there
TFW you’re writing Act III of your novel.

As I may have mentioned earlier, I’ve just started Act III of Meet the Lidwells.  This of course means that it’s that point of the story where I start bringing all the plot threads together, winding up the tale I’ve been telling, and wrapping everything up at the end.

Having either written novels piecemeal over the course of a long spread of time (thanks to homework, social life, or other priorities), or working on the same project for years on end (the trilogy), it feels quite strange to be completing a novel in roughly a half a year.  I’m not used to this speed.  There’s also the fact that this is a relatively short novel for me — I’m currently at 55k, and I’m expecting the finished project to be around 70k.

Still, there’s something to be said about reaching the home stretch. I felt this when I picked up The Balance of Light again in 2009-10 to finish it off.  It’s exciting to be wrapping up a story, my writer brain going at a hundred miles an hour as it tries to weave everything together into a coherent ending for me to write, and balancing that with the knowledge that I need to make that ending smooth and well-paced.  No rushing to the last page here, kids.  Even if I know exactly how to finish it, I have to make sure I don’t make a chaotic mad dash to get there.

My original deadline was going to be mid-September (I had a general deadline, not a specific one), and it looks like it might be more like late October, given that I still need to revise it, clean it up, and get it ready for uploading.  I’m fine with that; my ultimate goal here was to write something fast and light — a complete opposite to the trilogy, to be honest — to see if I could do it, and to see if it was something I could be proud of.

So far, so good.  I’m almost there.