Week of 12 March to 18 March
Despite what I said last week, I ended up doing my first revision of Charmers this week. I received some very insightful feedback on it early in the week and decided to act on it before it became stale. I foresee one more revision pass and then a proofread pass before I submit it, but I’m pleased with the story, and I don’t think there will be an huge changes to its current form.
That leaves me plenty of time to work on Impressions, which I only sort-of worked on this week. I got distracted by an idea I had for a story set in the Impressions world about six hundred years before the events of the novel. I played around with that idea for a lot of my writing time this week, thinking that I could use it as a bonus story or something to promote Impressions, but it stalled by Thursday – I think it may have been born mostly of my desire to get to the parts where I can write about all the cool things that the magic system can do. I might still write it, especially if I ultimately decide to go the self-publishing route with the novel, because I like the idea of a free promotional story I could share to help sell people on reading the novel, but by Friday I put it aside and got back to work on the real story. I finished chapter eight near the beginning of the week (I wasn’t entirely distracted), and am just a little into chapter nine. I want to finish that and be well into chapter ten by next weekend to compensate for this week’s distraction.
Speaking of stories that don’t quite work, my idea for a second story for March’s Elegant Literature prompt (of which Charmers is the first) isn’t going to work, at least not right now. I wanted to write something that incorporated the concept of probability waves and charm quarks, but it didn’t go anywhere, so I’m putting it aside. Maybe I’ll come back to the idea someday; the core idea for Charmers, after all, is something I’ve had rattling around in my head for years before it finally worked in this implementation.
It might not seem like it from this week’s update, but I really am doing well at focusing on just Impressions and a short story or two each month, even if I occasionally worry that I’m not posting as much content for the site as I did during the Blood Magic era. I should probably release a sneak peek at a chapter of Impressions or something soon, but speaking of Blood Magic, this week you’ll see my reflection on the series as a whole, which I deliberately put off so that everyone would have plenty of time to read the final episodes so that I could talk about spoilers in the reflection. Thursday’s review will be for The Clan of the Cave Bear, which was a surprisingly excellent book and one of my favorites of the year so far. So, consider this a reminder to read Blood Magic if you haven’t already, and I’ll be back next week with (I hope) significant Impressions progress to report.
IGC Publishing 