Author at Work: Wheat from Chaff
Now that the Virginia Festival of the Book is over for this year, it’s time for me to take advantage of being retired and get to work on Book #2. The working title is Sirena, by the way.
I have six chapters which are, more or less, complete and a number of unfinished chapters as well. Right now, I am focusing on Chapters one thru six.
Like many authors, I write a bunch of stuff for a chapter and then go back to wrestle it into some sort of reasonable form. This means, deleting unnecessary scenes, dialogue, events, and ideas cluttering the chapter. Some things are saved for ‘later’ while others go straight to the bin. All this is before my editor ever sees it and has a go at improving my work.
At the moment, I have Chapter 1 just about ready to go. It’s a long-ish one – 5 and a quarter pages in MS Word, down from 7 and one-half pages – but I feel I’ve tightened it up as much as I can. My editor will probably have other ideas about this.
Chapters two and three are now four pages, each. Number four is seven pages but a lot goes on in that chapter. The remaining two need a bit more to round them out so they may creep into the five-page range. All of this is the result of just over a day of slicing and dicing all six chapters.
My goal is to introduce the main conflict as soon as possible. I think I already have to some degree or at least I’ve dropped some significant hints along the way. Nonetheless, it will still be be a few chapters more before the gloves really come off.
For those fans who may be worried about certain characters, I can reveal that Penelope and Peter are still very much in love and will be that way when the final page is turned. There will be a bit of strain on their relationship in the process but they’ll persevere.
If you’re wondering about the plot itself, I can reveal that someone has a very big crush on Peter.
Finally, I do not plan to give a blow-by-blow account of developing Book # 2. < A sigh of relief is heard without > I will, however, give occasional progress updates. This has been one of them.
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