Sorry I've been away so long but with the nebula 50th anniversary in closing out SFWA’s books for the year I've been too busy to update you on my continuing saga of exploring Plotland. On the plus side I've managed to get draft 3.5 of the novel completed so I only have to edit the piece two or three more times to find out were all the plot holes appear, correct misspellings, brush up the dialogue (a LOT!), research a few facts, and clean up the flow before I can ship it to some beta readers (any volunteers?)
Doing a much longer piece then my usual short stories has been an experience. I found it hard to concentrate on a single piece for months at a time so it has been tiring, mostly as a result of trying really, really hard NOT to work on the other stories languishing on my to-do pile. As a result 2015 will mark a new low for my usual output of twenty or more stories. On the plus side I managed to sell a bunch of pieces that I wrote in 2014 and see the publication of my make-up novel Distant Seas.
The biggest difficulty in writing this long piece has been trying to keep all of the subplots and characters in their proper places, figuring out who knows what and when they knew it. Giving the characters depth and personalities was more involved then I would normally do for a short story. Without the help of Scrivener I would have been lost my way time and again. Scrivener made keeping track of scenes, vignettes, and research so much easier. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad to take some time away and work on... WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!
I'll never learn.
#SFWApro
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