Progress on all fronts

I got the draft up to 21,600 words. I am transferring a lot at this point, but it all needs to be carefully reworked as the early events have changed and any references to them have to be addressed.

One things I have noticed is that I am much better about writing descriptions now. I had to force myself to stop and think about what the scene looked like, what the characters looked like and include it, but I am doing that more naturally now. It is becoming how I think about the scenes and characters.

In short, the manuscript is coming along and I am growing as a writer. Progress on all fronts.

A little snippet:

              Aaron turned to Aila and took a step back as her appearance again morphed from the slight woman he’d met that morning to something befitting the name Nymph. Her hair and skin changed as it had before. She seemed to expand as her eyes darkened to an emerald hue.

Beside her, a sapling emerged from the earth beneath her outstretched hand. A sense of awe filled him once more.

“Anything?” Lonan asked.

“Huh?”

“Can you feel her magic?”               

“It doesn’t work that way.” The changes in Aila’s appearance melted away and she stood once more as the petite woman he’d tried to protect all afternoon. “It’s not an active energy like your magics. I can always feel the hum of the life points and a faint flare when one is used nearby, but if he had access to the life points, he wouldn’t need me to demonstrate to know that.”

A timely update for once

I haven’t had my writing time today, yet, but I did want to take a moment and give a little update because I have had a very good writing week. The draft is now about 18k, so I have been able to add nearly 6k to the draft this week. A lot of it was transferring scenes over and reworking them to fit the changes I am making. I have finally reached the scene I wanted to rework before beginning work with my artist to illustrate it. 😀 This was a big goal for me.

The next section is going to be largely rewritten as I am fixing a fairly major hole in the world building. Some of the other flaws are slowly being worked out as I rewrite and rework scenes naturally now that I realize what the problem was. Things like characterization and pacing are so much better in this draft. The progress I have made since I sought outside input is so much more than I expected. In part, because I didn’t realize how much work I still had to do, but all the same, I want to improve and that is happening.

A little expert:

              Chaos broke out as he turned only to find the shocking sight of Aila standing with a sword drawn. Where had she hidden a sword? 

              Despite the gesture, he could see the way her hands shook. How wide her eyes were as they skipped from one man to the next. She let out a cry as a ball of fire flew toward her only to dissipate as if it had hit something. 

              Blocks. Telepathic energy shields. Halvar is protecting us. Aaron’s mind reeled as Halvar tried to get them moving. Aila seemed frozen. 

              “Come on!” Halvar pleaded. 

              The three men split up, moving quickly to surround them. Another fact from the games they’d played forced his feet into motion: A naim could only hold one block at a time. 

              Aaron grabbed Aila’s arm and she stumbled but followed as he pulled her close and moved them both toward Halvar. 

              Aila’s wide eyes took in the sorcerer approaching them from behind. “Here!” Aila thrust the hilt of the sword toward him. 

              Before he could explain that he had no idea what to do with it, Aila’s form shifted to what he assumed was the link to the plant life. Several saplings sprung out of the ground between them and the apparent sorcerer.                Somewhere in the chaos, Halvar had taken the sword and was working to disarm the nearest attacker. Aaron spun as the third threw something at them. Without waiting to see what it was, Aaron grabbed Aila and pulled her against him as he stumbled into the trees she’d just pulled up from the lifeless ground.

Progress update

This week has gone pretty well. I didn’t have a lot of writing days, but I have been thinking through some things that are going to help.

The draft is just over 12k now and I am in a section of the story that is being transferred and reworked rather than rewritten entirely.

A funny thing I have noticed about this draft is that I am putting back a lot of things that I took out in previous drafts. I am seeing now that while I recognized that something wasn’t working at particular points, I misjudged what it was that wasn’t working. I seem to have removed several elements that were not executed well, but when done well, was correct to the story and characters. So I find I am reworking and reinserting several scenes and threads that I had clipped, recognizing that it didn’t work, but not understanding the why.

I am really excited about the next section that I plan to rewrite. It doesn’t involve something I removed, but I am weaving in an idea I had for the second book. It fixes a problem I had in the world building and plays to what appears to be one of the strengths of the story. And it’s just going to be a blast to write it.

A little snippet from this week’s work (brief as this is a really sad section of story):

She was vaguely aware of movement and the hum of electricity in the air, but her world had shrunk to shadows and those sightless green eyes.

Thanks for reading!

Be blessed.

Michelle R Bowen

Anyone else in a struggle season?

These past couple months have been rough. Not only for me, but like, my whole family and several of my friends.

For various reasons, I haven’t been writing a whole lot. I have gotten past a scene that I was a little stuck on, though I know that this whole first part is probably going to need another rewrite, but I will deal with that after I get through the whole draft. There is a chance I will still make my goal of 15k by this end of the month, I am sitting at about 9700 words right now, so I am making progress. Once I get past the opening where most of the work is needed, I should get through the rest a little faster.

I am so grateful for everyone who has been following me through this journey. It feels really good to be getting so close to actually publishing. I can’t wait to get this out there.

Here’s a little snippet:

              Ray frowned, staring at Aaron. Aaron stared back, raising his brow with a shrug. “I am not suddenly going to know more. Are you reading me?”

              Ray sat back with a sigh. “Yeah, but you’re right. You aren’t going to know more because I want you to.”

              Silence fell between them. Aaron had hundreds of questions he wanted to ask, but he wasn’t sure he wanted answers to any of them. He wasn’t ready. Vale being real still felt obscure, like this was all a book he was reading rather than real life.

              Ray slapped his hands on his knees suddenly. “We’re going to have to go find it.”

Brief update

I was pretty sick this entire week and even when I was feeling better I had lingering fatigue and brain fog so I didn’t write anything until this afternoon. I got a whole 200 words in.

The setback is frustrating as I just want to get through this draft and get another step closer to publishing, but it is what it is. I am still working. 🙂

Given that I wrote almost nothing, I am going to skip the excerpt this week.

Thanks for reading!

Be blessed,

Michelle R Bowen

Slightly late update

My oldest started school so we are on virus number 3, maybe 4. Needless to say, it’s been a little rough these past few weeks. This latest virus had me laid up in bed most of the day yesterday so I wasn’t able to do my update.

I haven’t been writing a lot this week, but it has been very productive. I am trying to sort out what process works best for me, so what I am trying for this draft is to do a rough outline for a portion of the story that serves a particular purpose, and then when I finish that part, I am going to stop and reread, take notes on what I got right and where I went off the rails and I reached my first stopping point this week. The draft is currently just over 7500 words and there is some reworking that I need to go back and do, but I have decided that I will never finish the draft if I do it now, so the plan is to stop and check each section, take notes and after I finish the draft, I can go back and fix those parts that are weak.

The next few days I plan to map out the next part of the story and see which scenes I am keeping, which I need to rewrite and how to weave in the new POV I am adding. So hopefully I will have a good chunk added on to the draft by the end of the week. If we don’t catch virus number 4.

Here’s a little snippet:

              He narrowed his eyes. Were the trees glowing?

              He took a tentative step forward; his eyes fixed on the nearest tree. He stopped before the tree, staring at it as if it would suddenly make sense. It was glowing. He suddenly stood in a strange world with trees that glowed and he had no idea how he’d gotten here.

              Glowing trees. Why did that feel familiar? He reached out and touched the white bark, causing a small piece to break off and flutter to the soft grass below. It felt like a normal tree. He pulled his hand back, rubbing his fingers together. Whatever made the trees glow didn’t seem to come off. The same strange since of familiarity nagged at him. Was it from a movie or show he’d watched?

Not as fast as I would like, but stronger

I did really well keeping up with my 500 words a day goal until I got sick.

I did mange to double the length, bring it just over 5k. The writing sessions I have been able to get in have been really fun and I feel like I have a better grasp of the characters and how to lay the foundations for the story a little better than I did before. Getting outside input was so helpful. I know this story and world so well, there were very simple, obvious gaps that I just couldn’t see being as close to the story as I am. It feels like this time around I am capturing what I need to on the page without putting too much.

It’s slow going, but I think this draft is going to be so much stronger.

Here’s a little peek:

              “You are about to be so busy that I, who live with you, won’t even see you and you want to start something with a girl?” He crossed his arms and leaned against the counter next to the stove.

              Zuriel shrugged. “It could be a good test.”

              Halvar rolled his eyes and pushed off the counter. “Let me know when dinner is ready.”

              “You are not invited to dinner, Ray.” Zuriel called after him as he left the room. “Ray? Ray!”

              Halvar smiled to himself as he started up the stairs with Zuriel still yelling at him that he wasn’t invited to dinner.

Progress update

I had a bit of a rough week with a migraine so I didn’t write as much as I wanted to. I haven’t been very inspired lately and I haven’t been wanting to force it. I am probably over thinking it, worrying too much about getting it write so I don’t have to rewrite it again.

I have already deviated from my draft lol I made it a whole 9 pages, about 2400 words before drifting, but this does tell me that my instinct to do an outline for each section rather than doing the entire book is going to be the best way for my process. I can’t always see what the right details are until I start getting into the scenes even if I get the general sense of the scenes right.

So as of now the draft is about 2,500 words of a planned 120k.

A little snippet:

                Maybe he was stuck because he’d decided to be. He stood up straight as he worked through the idea. Maybe he could do the bakery prep shift then work at the coffee shop on the weekends. It would be exhausting, but it was just a few months. He could do it for a few months.

Working on the next draft

I have received all the alpha feedback I am anticipating and have had a chance to think through it all. After deciding what changes I need to make, I have come to the realization that I need to do a full rewrite to do all the needed shifts. There are significant portions I will be leaving essentially as is, but I am planning on changing some of the POVs and clarifying some of the timeline and strengthening some character arcs.

I know what the story is now and I can see what needs to be adjusted to get it to where I want it.

I got 1400 words into this current draft and discovered it wasn’t quite right. I have figured out what was wrong with it and am starting it again. I am about 400 words in, but I am pretty sure this is the correct version of the prequel. At any rate, I think it will be good enough to move on from when I finish it. I will probably want to rework it after I finish the draft, but for now I think it will work.

As much as I did not want to do another rewrite, I am excited to be making progress not only in this story, but in my own process as a writer. I have a better idea of how to craft a story and build out character arcs. I can see how some of my ideas don’t quite work and what to do instead.

In celebration of progress, here are the opening lines as they stand now:

              Halvar made his way through the nymph-wrought walls of the Halcyon palace, rubbing his hand over his short black and blue hair. He’d been messing with it since it had been shaved four days ago as a sign of mourning after the destruction of the nymph capitals in southern Vale the week before. This week was supposed to be so different from what it had suddenly become. This far into the new year they would typically be finishing the weeklong celebration of the Founding. Instead, they were preparing for war.

Thank you so much for reading!

Blessings,

Michelle R Bowen

I have some updates!

Hello!

I haven’t shared anything the past few weeks as there really wasn’t much to share, this week there is.

First, I have finalized the front cover with my cover artist! I thought the process of finding an artist, figuring out what I wanted and getting it done would take forever, but I lucked out and found a great artist that is so easy to work with and was available. We will have to revisit it to finalize the wrap once I finish writing the book so I know the dimensions. And have a blurb.

I also got back my first round of feedback by way of my developmental editor and it is so helpful. I am full of ideas for how to make character arcs stronger, clarify world building (the thing I knew I needed outside help to see, I just know too much to know when I didn’t share something), strengthen my writing style and a million other little things.

While I have been awaiting feedback, I have also been scribbling out scenes and ideas for the second book and that document is over 16k words now and I think I am closing in on the basic structure enough that I might be able to start drafting it while I wait to get the rest of my alpha feedback in.

I would absolutely love to have a clear idea of when I will be finalizing book 1 as well as a beginning of the first draft for book 2 by the end of the year. That feels doable.

Having the cover is adding extra motivation to get it done because I don’t want to share it ridiculously early but also it’s so pretty and I want to share it.

In the mean time, here’s a little snippet from my book 2 scribbles:

[Context: This is from a scene where Zuriel is with Pyre who plays the memory for him. I have to redact what the memory was and what triggered it for spoilers.]

A smile tugged at his lips at the memory. 

              The smile slipped somewhat as the sight before him shifted and he could see it play out before him from the dragon’s point of view. 

              “Don’t.” He breathed, unable to tear his eyes away despite the pain the sight sent radiating through his chest. 

              The scene vanished but the ache remained. 

              “I’m sorry. It brings me comfort to picture Corban. [redacted], too. I forget it does not do the same for you.” 

              Zuriel pushed his hands into his hair, tugging at the roots as he closed his eyes and breathed through the pain. “It’s alright. It just…hurts.” 

Thanks for reading!

Blessings,

Michelle R Bowen