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.

Quick update

While I am waiting to get feedback on book 1, I have been working on getting the plot together for the second book.

I am using a little different technique than I have before, paying more attention to who needs to be included and what their arc will be to avoid some of the pitfalls I have had in the past, so hopefully it will come together faster and stronger, though I am still very much a discovery writer and won’t really know all the twists and turns until I write them. Already the story has evolved from the early scribbles I wrote out for it.

It has been so much fun to work with all these different ideas and characters. I am so excited to share this story.

A little scribble:

“I’m going to go for a flight. Do you want to join me?”

Halvar sat up. “Yes and no.” He grinned at Zuriel.

Zuriel felt his own mouth tick up. “Wuss.”

“Oh come on!” Halvar said as he stood. “There isn’t even a saddle. If he wanted to shake me off, he’d have no problem. We weren’t made to fly anyway.”

Zuriel smiled as they started out of the hall side by side. “If we aren’t meant to fly, why do dragons agree to fly us around?”

Halvar scrunched his face. “They’re arrogant buggers. They’re showing off.” He snapped his fingers, “That’s it, they are showing off their chosen like a pedigree dog.”

Zuriel laughed at that, grateful for his brother’s company.

Thanks for reading!

-Michelle R Bowen

Struggling a little this week

I really wanted to be done with this pass by now, but I am still on page 254 out of 304.

Hopefully it wont take too long to get through the last fifty pages, then I am going to go back and do some edits on chapter one since I got a sample edit for that one and I am excited to make some changes there.

I haven’t been wanting to work in Vale this past few days though. Probably because I have been wanting to listen to My Epic (A band) and that is coded in my mind as Hallendrest music which is a different WIP. So my brain has been more in Hallendrest than in Vale.

But, I fully intend to be ready to send it off for Developmental edits in July, and that is still very doable.

Also, slightly funny story. So, I realized this week that I spelled “Dueling” wrong. It was watching sword fighting videos that got me thinking about dueling and what the word means. When I “made” the term, I was thinking of the word “dual”. The idea was combining the idea of duality with a changeling. I was aiming for Dualing, though I opted for the spelling: Dualling to keep the base Dual and the suffix -ling. I have also learned it is a British term for expanding a road from one lane to two, so that works well since it’s an alternation that allows the altered to hold more magic.

Language is so fun. I eat this kind of stuff up even if I fail epically at it at times.

Here is a little snippet I enjoyed on this pass:

“I am old, Zuriel. I have forgotten more lifetimes than you can fathom. I have access to knowledge that no one knows about, and I have studied these things longer than my memory extends. I promise you, Zuriel, if there was another way to save Vale, I would do it. I would have done it long ago.”

Thanks for reading!

Blessings,

Michelle R Bowen