Drawing from the Well
Let’s break down what I’ve been working on.
I’m still in the Book III Outline. I know; this one’s taking me a while. It was more ambitious than I originally thought and that has been scary and daunting which has fed into some of the other struggles lately to sap my motivation and creativity.
It’s not an excuse, just reality.
So the outline itself has several sections. I start with generalities, specifically “What do we know so far?” (Something about speaking in a royal collective sense helps focus me.) Then I jump into the character arcs, which took a lot this time, followed by important characters and the settings. Lastly, there’s a list of things that come up during the outlining process that are useful for future books in the series. Obviously, when I get around to writing a standalone, that last section won’t exist, but for this, it absolutely does. I had to work out some stuff for the rest of the series to figure out where to take this book so there is A LOT to carry over into the Book IV outline.
The question you’re probably asking amongst all this rambling is where am I in this process. Well, General Stuff, Arcs, and Characters are done. I might need to invent some more characters during drafting, but that happened in Book II so I’m not scared of that. I’m finishing the settings tonight and then, finally, we’re moving to Phase 3 of the process: mapping. I’m excited to get into that as I have a pretty clear idea of how I’m going to approach it with this book.
Hopefully next week I’ll be able to start giving updates as to how many scenes I’ve laid out on which arc. It’s going to be so much fun for me!
Thanks for coming on the journey.
P.S. – Publication is currently on hold. I’ll talk about that a little below.
Filling the Well
29. Rule of Queens – Morgan Rice
30. Bridge of Souls – Victoria Schwab
31. Judge Dee and the Three Deaths of Count Werdenfels – Lavie Tidhar
32. An Oath of Brothers – Morgan Rice
33. A Dream of Mortals – Morgan Rice
34. A Joust of Knights – Morgan Rice
35. The Gift of Battle – Morgan Rice
36. All Our Yesterdays – Cristin Terrill
I finally finished The Sorcerer’s Ring series. It was engaging and exciting and held me most of the time. yes, there were dull moments but it was worth the ride.
For the rest, Bridge of Souls, Book 3 in Schwab’s Cassidy Blake series was just as good as the first two entries. This is no surprise to me as Victoria Schwab is my favorite author and I feel like she spins magic out of words, but she continues to live up to that. The second Judge Dee short story was great. All Our Yesterdays was my favorite kind of time travel story. It addressed paradoxes and parallel timelines and time remnants and I loved every minute of it. Seriously, if you like Back to the Future or the new Star Trek movie (specifically involving Spock), check out this book.
36/100 for #ProjectBookworm2021
Well Chat
I know in my last post I said that my next post, ostensibly this post, would start a two-part series, but it’s been 8 weeks since I posted and there are reasons for that. Some of them I’ll talk about…one day, some of them I intend to keep to myself, but they are all personal. What I want to talk about here today is the nature of struggle, how I have dealt with it recently, and normalizing it all a bit.
April is always a lot for me. My wife and I both have birthdays so there’s a lot going on all month. This year, it got complicated. My focus was already divided with that and then the complications sapped it further. That wasn’t the only heavy thing last month either. I won’t get into the rest, not today, but suffice it to say that my heart was not in my art.
And that’s okay.
Life gets in the way sometimes. Life is what really matters. It’s the most important thing. Family, love, friends, your community. You exist within all of that so when it needs your attention, you give it. Art doesn’t matter if you don’t have people to share it with, to celebrate with when it comes together.
When life became a lot, whenever it becomes a lot, I recede. I crawl back into my shell. I go into a form of survival mode. When that happens, I put all my focus and energy into the things that matter most to me, the kind of things I mentioned above. Parts of me shut down. Once that happens, it takes a long time to feel like I can create again. That survival mode saps everything from me. My batteries are slow to recharge.
We all have struggles and we all have different ways of coping. Some of them are healthier than others. I’m not saying mine is healthy; in many ways it definitely isn’t. There are things I can do better and, no, I’m still not going into specifics. One thing about struggling and coping is that it is okay for that to be yours. You need a support system, but it doesn’t have to be a public one. In fact, it probably shouldn’t be. Lean into your friends and loved ones and let them bear the burden with you. Many hands make light work.
I am back in a creative space now. There is still a lot going on in my life, but I’m back to the book, back to the writing, back to a part of me that I love. I can’t wait to bring the future of my writing to fruition. Publication is on the back burner for the moment while I get the ball rolling again. It will come soon and I’ll announce things as they come to be. Thanks again for joining me on this journey.
Next week, we’ll start that two-parter I mentioned in March. We’re back on track, folks.
May the tide carry you to safer shores.
BSG