Week of 23 October to 29 October
I really didn’t think I could do it. Balancing Act felt like it was going so slowly, each viewpoint dragging by without enough happening, and I really didn’t think I was going to get it finished by the end of October, despite my goal. I said as much in last week’s post, and it wouldn’t have been the end of the world if work on Part One slipped into next week. But I did it! Almost ten thousand words later, I finished writing the first part of Blood Magic‘s season finale. It still needs revisions, of course, but that means that November’s episode is done right on time.
For all of my early struggles writing it, once I got into the flow of the story this week the words kept coming, and I’m really pleased with how it turned out. We’ll talk more details in the release post, but suffice to say that there are some good character moments, the tension is high, and the plot is shaping up nicely. A lot of elements are coming together for this one (or these two, I suppose), and I really think you’re going to be satisfied with what I’m doing. Well, not with just the one part. There’s a bit of a cliffhanger. But by the time part two is done, I think we’ll have done what we needed to do.
Before I go into the second part, I’m going to take at least a week and focus on revising A Spiritual Journey. I’ve officially decided on a release date of December 10th for that story. Originally it was slated for a November release, but based on the plotting of Balancing Act and how those timelines line up, I decided to push the story back to December, so that Balancing Act, Part One would be live before A Spiritual Journey. It could have gone either way, but I think this will work better. Really, you can choose to read them in either order, and you’ll be able to read Part Two without reading the bonus episode at all, but if you’re going to read it, it will be most impactful if you read it before the second part of Balancing Act.
Aside from writing ten thousand words of Balancing Act this week, I finished revisions on Principles, which will be going live on Monday (October 31st) – in other words, I was just in time with this one. Fortunately, there were not a lot of revisions required; I managed to make this one pretty strong on the first write-through. I’ve noticed that the season three episodes tend to require fewer revisions, which I’m hoping is indicative of my increasing strength as a writer. Or, alternatively, it means that I’m not very good at doing revisions until I have more time apart from a story.
As I already mentioned, we have a story release coming up on Monday for Principles, which is the last, new Blood Magic episode before we start the two-part Balancing Act. It’s kind of a feel-good story, and I think you will enjoy it. Tuesday’s post will discuss clarity of communication, specifically with regards to opaque or confusing sentence structures and word choice – a little bit of a follow-up to our discussions of choosing words and the function of language. Our book review for the week is The Young HG Wells, hence the recent review for War of the Worlds. Plus, I will find out this week whether Dragon’s Hoard was accepted for publication in Elegant Literature, so watch for a special announcement about that story. It’s a busy time at IGC Publishing, so be sure to check for updates and follow the site so you know what’s happening. After all of that, I’ll be back next week with another weekly writing update.
IGC Publishing 