Two Works In Progress

Right now I'm working on two, count 'em, two Works In Progress.

The first is the completed first draft of the story I started writing last year then abandoned for several months. As I mentioned in last week's post I put a copy of that on my Nook Tablet so that I could review it and mark it up for edits, but I deliberately left that to one side for a few days. I started on that the other day and I've highlighted several chunks that need changing; some need to be rewritten, some need to be just ripped out. My process is that I won't start the actual editing until I've re-read the whole thing and marked up everything that needs to be done, and at this point I'm about 15% done with that markup pass. I'm not rushing it - I want to do the best job I can and since I have until January I'm in no great hurry.

The second WiP is the new story that I also mentioned last week. I have the main storyline worked out, together with the beginnings of four major characters. I said last week that it would be in the Steampunk genre; that's still true. I also said that I was considering setting it in the same world as the other WiP (the one I'm reviewing/editing now), but that is no longer the case. See, a few days ago I had a dream. Usually I don't remember dreams unless I either wake up in the middle of one, or something happens later on that reminds me of something in the dream, and both of these occurrences are rare. In this case something in a movie I was watching sparked a memory of a detail of the dream and the rest came back to me a little at a time as I thought about it. And this dream gave me a terrific idea for a twist to the new story. I can't say more about it without committing major spoilerage, but I'm pretty excited about the way things are coming along. The point I was getting at, though, is that this change makes it impossible for this story to be in the same world as the the other story, so that won't be happening.

I'm still working on the story - I have at one subplot that I want to work into the thread, and an idea for another one that I rather like - so it'll be at least a couple more weeks (probably closer to six or eight, or even more) before I'm ready to begin laying down some storyboard. Right now I'm adding notes to the project (using Scrivener, in case you're interested) and I'll continue to do that until I have it all worked out.

That's enough about work for now. Time to get back to the other work (the one that pays the bills). Until next week...