What a wicked ride the last week has been!
It was just seven days ago that I decided to shelve the Silo story and work on a different one. In those seven, I have outlined a story, wrote it, and sent it out to beta readers. I have also designed the book cover and the book blurb! If my editor wasn’t busy on another project at the moment, I would be getting the first round of comments back from her shortly. I at least got word back from a few of the beta readers already, and they were both very encouraging. I hope to get the remaining comments back in a few days and can start working through some very mild rewrites. With any luck, I can “inspire” my editor to work expeditiously on the editing so that I can get this book out to the readers before the end of the month.
Now, without further delay, here’s the blurb for the back of the Borrowed Souls:
[box]
Wade Duffy is average.
He lives an ordinary life with a mediocre job. He is an indifferent husband, living in a comfortable apartment, married to an extraordinary wife. That’s how he explains it.
At the end of an unusually bad day, his life is turned upside down and the only thing that can catch him from falling is the soul collector.
Will he be allowed to keep his, or will he have to give it back?[/box]
For now, that is what I’m going with. I’m going to have my editor have a pass at it after she goes through her first round of edits.
So, today I was thinking about how I did in one week, what took me much much longer on the other two books that I’ve written. I’ve concluded that it has to be partly contributed to the passion factor. Sure, I was passionate about the other stories, but there was something sidetracking my mind. I think it was because the first two were my first two “real” stories going out into the public. The silo story intrigued me, but it wasn’t the same as writing on an original piece. I constantly felt as if I was playing another kids sandbox. As hard as I worked on the story, it was still someone else’s story. I am sure I’ll get back to the silo story at some point, but for now, it is on the shelf.
I can also attribute the quickness to a new work habit. I get up every day at 5:15 to write. I’ve actually been doing that since August. It’s crazy how productive I can be in just an hour before I have to get ready for work. So, the time getting up hasn’t changed. What has is breaking my habit of checking emails first thing in the morning. After grabbing a cup of joe, I would sit at the computer and spend the next 5, 10, 20 minutes reading through emails and such. Then I would check sales stats and mess around a bit on social networking. Them if I was lucky, I would write as fast as I could for like 15 minutes. Last week, I started the writing first. If I could knock out 500 uninterrupted words in the first 30 minutes, I would break for emails. What happens is I get so absorbed in the writing, that I skip emails and the internet completely until I get to the office. The last 7 days is proof that it works. Now, I just need to stay on target, and keep writing first.
Now, as I anxiously wait for all beta comments to come back, I have begun the outlining process for the next installment of Linear Shift. Actually, I am going to complete the outline for all the remaining parts. That way, I can work on a bit more foreshadowing in part three. I sort of had an outline for the entire series when I started, but it was like one or two pages long. Not thorough enough to have a clear picture of direction. Now, after this week, with any luck, I’ll have the outline complete and can start working on writing the first draft. I think by the time I roll with the writing, I will have Borrowed Souls rewritten and sitting in the inbox for my editor.