Many things about life get easier with practice, and so I assume that eventually, starting a new book will seem less daunting. I am two days and 1,200 words into the project–so far, so good! As an experiment, I am using Scrivener for this draft. I know any number of people who swear by it.
The new novel itself is, well, very “me” in that it is another of those kitchen-sink mashups I always seem to come up with and then despair of selling. The skeleton of the story was my 2014 NaNoWriMo project (one of the years I didn’t finish for some reason). Since then I’ve noodled a bit on it, but up to now have not gone back to make a proper draft. I think it’s a fun idea, and I’m looking forward to fleshing it out.
Speaking of NaNo, I do have an idea for a whole other project to do for that. Depending on how progress goes this month, I may switch over to that one in November or shelve the idea for next year. My long-term goal as currently written is to finish three more books by 2023, and I have more ideas than that in my backlog right now. There’s no real need to sketch out yet another one unless my working pace increases dramatically.
Not much else going on with us right now. I love my new job. My goal tracking system seems to be working. I’ve been fitting in more reading these past few weeks–revisited American Gods after a damn long time, and also re-read The Game of Kings. Started Queen’s Play but seem to have stalled out during one of the long set pieces in that book, so I may need to change gears for a while.
Also, we’re getting some fish! All set up and waiting for new inhabitants in a few more days.
By then I might be up to 5% done.
R Jean Stevenson 