Weekly Writing Update

I’m back, and I met my goal of finishing part one of Impressions by the end of April…sort of. I’m pleased with how chapter twelve came out, although I fear that some of the foreshadowing may prove a little heavy-handed, but that can be worked out in revisions. Chapter thirteen, though, is rough. Very rough, to the point that I intend to go back and rework it before I continue onto part two. Aside from Professor Rasher’s speech, most of the chapter didn’t quite work for me, and I’m not sold on where I left Raven at the end of it. Even though readers can go right into part two, I think there needs to be a better transition. So, while I technically did finish part one by the end of the month, I’m expecting not to really dig into part two until the end of the upcoming week or even the start of the next one.

That timing will depend on how long a few other projects I need to undertake end up occupying me. First would be a rough draft for whatever May’s Elegant Literature prompt ends up being, which I usually end up cranking out (if I do one at all) in the first week of the month. That rarely takes me long, but that’s on the list for the coming week. Speaking of which, I did submit A Meal to Live For to Elegant Literature‘s April contest, and it will be exceedingly ironic if it’s accepted, because I wrote it in an hour as a throw-away story and did almost no revision on it. We’ll find out tomorrow if Charmers (last month’s submission) was accepted or not to the “Gambler’s Grief” issue.

Last week, when we didn’t have a weekly writing update, I finished Archmage and the Unicorn Queen. It ended up being five parts, a bit over thirty five thousand words, so a very respectable novella. My test audience (my wife) enjoyed the story, and gave me some very helpful feedback, so I have a darling to kill in revisions, which is the other major task I intend to undertake this week. Once the first revision pass is done, I’ll circulate it with my writing group, do another few revision passes, and prepare it for final presentation. I intend this to be an IGC Publishing original release, since the length isn’t suitable for most contests or submissions, at least not those with which I’m familiar. Look out for more details in future posts and an official release date to be announced probably in a few weeks.

Oh, and I really need to get my act in gear on reading – Goodreads is telling me that I’m soon to be behind in my reading goal for the year, and wouldn’t that be a tragedy. Turns out that reading eight hundred pages of research papers on electroaerodynamic thrusters isn’t very helpful for writing book reviews. That’s mildly irksome, since it’s not as if I haven’t been reading, but so it goes. Maybe I’ll still write a review for this site, since I thought they were good reads. I’m working my way through Organon now, so I should have that review up by the end of the coming week (for those of you who follow the Goodreads reviews – if you just follow the reviews on the site, you’ll have to wait a few months).

Speaking of the site, I finally got around to updating the homepage, although I might make some changes soon – all of these Elegant Literature story updates look a little cluttered. Tuesday’s post will be discussing “classics” and what makes a book fall into that esteemed(?) category, and Thursday’s review is for a new Conn Iggulden book, The Lion (well, it was new when I read it, at any rate). That’s all for this week – be sure to check back next week for another weekly writing update, and hopefully some progress on Impressions part two.