The Winding Road

The strangest thing I’ve discovered about writing is that the more time I spend writing this book, the farther away the finish line seems. I’ve had a few people make comments recently such as, “How long have you been working on this book?” “You must be almost done, right?” or “How long does it take to write a book anyway?” To which I answer that I had the idea for the No Man’s Land Series twenty years ago (a nugget of an idea, that was all) but started putting words on the page back in April. As for when will I be finished? That depends on your exact definition of “finished.”

By pure word count, the first book of the series is “complete.” It’s about 90,000 words and contains a plot that makes sense from page 1 to page 360ish, depending on formatting. However, that doesn’t mean it’s truly finished. I know it still isn’t exactly what I want it to be. And, as I am not a careful plotter, a la J.K.Rowling, I really need to have rough drafts complete of every book in the series before I can truly be sure that book 1 is ready to share with the world. Otherwise, a major change in book 2 or 3 may mean that something in book 1 no longer makes sense. So I’m hard at work on that now. Luckily, I’m a fast writer.

And then there’s today’s light bulb moment. I’ve mentioned before that the basic structure of the series is that each book begins with one main character and a corresponding story line. At various points, these characters run into each other. I’m starting to feel like I need to move things around a bit, however, so that all, or at least two, of the main characters, are introduced to the readers earlier.

Which is… an undertaking. I’m a wee bit intimidated by the thought. And it might not even be the best idea, in which case I will scrap it and stick with the current format.

It’s silly to stress, I know. There is no agent bugging me about deadlines, no publisher waiting impatiently. Just me, and the goals I have for this story. But still, I want it to be just right, and I’m still finessing exactly what that will look like when the series is complete.

With that said, I’m getting back to work…