Getting Ahead of Myself

Blog Post No. 461

I haven’t started the second draft of Snow from a Different Sky, yet. I hope to get into it this coming week (and really jump in with both feet). I’m also not done going over Christian‘s latest book. I have no excuse as to why I’m not finished. I was generally reluctant to work on anything last week (especially over the weekend) but I’ve gotten back to it with renewed focus. I’m trying to be okay with not getting much done since finishing the first draft of Snow. Mostly because I’ve accepted that I can’t change the past (not even the recent past).

Thinking back on the last few weeks, I can’t pin down what’s been occupying so much of my time. The most prominent memories are of the day job. While I’m not there as often as I was, there’s more stress involved in being there and I also spend more time preparing to go to work and cleaning up after. (It’s amazing how tedious sanitizing all the stuff I carry can be day after day). But really, that’s not a large percentage of my time in a week. (Not yet, anyway). I do find I need more time to decompress after a shift than I used to. I’ve said it many times before, stress is real.

When I’m not headlong into something (and especially when I’m working on something tedious) my mind wanders to stories. It’s a gut reaction that’s as natural to me as scratching an itch. I suppose it’s not much more than daydreaming, but it does go more in depth than fantasizing about the meal I’m going to have when I get home or picturing myself on the beach of some tropical island. Though, most of my stories do come from imagining myself in different scenarios. Ultimately, I try to make my characters distinct from me, but in the end, they are all at least a little bit me.

Where was I? So, even though I have all of the editing to do with Snow and several more drafts of the Invasion Novel, I’ve been thinking about the next novel. After Snow, I’m taking a break from the novellas to focus on novels so that I can try to get an agent. I have a lot of work to do to get the Invasion Novel in a place where I feel confident sending it off to query. Once I’ve sent off the first batch (which you will eventually read all about because it really is a lot of work) I’m going to dive into the next novel. I have a couple of ideas, but I’m not sure which direction to take. One of them feels a little more like a novella than a novel and another may be too similar to the Invasion Novel.

I’m not going to get too far into it now since I won’t start on it until next summer by the earliest, but that’s where my head as been this week. Off in the clouds, dreaming about stories I haven’t written yet. For now, it’s back to reviewing Christian’s book and gearing up for the second draft of Snow. Always so much to do!