In other writing news...
A long, long time ago when laura_josephsen and I were a million discussions deep into "Restoration" and the mythology of the world was finally starting to congeal, I made the following lofty, sweeping suggestion:
"Let's write twelve books!"
Awww, such adorable hubris.
Now, in my defense, twelve books matches the twelve speakers who are (or will become) the central heroes of the series. Also, twelve has a particular symmetry that I've always loved, as well as a great deal of mythological, literary, and spiritual significance.
To date we only have four books written, and the fourth one is only a weak, wee little baby of a first draft. In the intervening seven, eight-ish years since Laura and I started writing together, many things have changed, including our respective writing journeys, the direction of the series, and that precious bliss of Inspiration-High!!! we had when we began.
I was muddling all of this aloud to a coworker over lunch last Thursday, and unbidden, I tacked this onto the end of a completely different point I'd been making, "... unless we just write fewer books to end the series."
It was like someone hit my brain with the writer's equivalent of jumper cables. For the rest of the lunch I became the worst conversation partner ever, and as soon as I got back to my desk at work I hastily scrambled up an email to Laura, explaining what had happened, a proposal, and some specifics to support it. After waiting 5 minutes, I picked up my phone to call her and ask her to check her email if at all convenient. She did. And didn't hesitate one fraction of a second in agreeing with me.
In short, Restoration is no longer going to total twelve books, but seven. It will probably require pulling apart over half of Book 3, but the good news is, by my estimation we are about halfway done with the total necessary work for the series.
It's such a weight off of my mind, and Laura's too, and it's renewed my excitement for the series and the characters. I think they're going to be stronger for it. Hilariously, the series is going to end up having a much stronger element of "Stop the evil empire", which we were desperately hoping to avoid, but what's good enough for Star Wars, Avatar:tLA, and countless others is surely good enough for us. Anyway, there's also a tolerably more benevolent Empire too. ;-)
What's truly amazing, in hindsight, is how long it took for us to come to this. I have a notoriously bad habit of complacency with the status quo. It's not that I'm even stubborn about it sometimes, it's just I truly don't see some other possibility because there's a way that works and it's good for me, so why look elsewhere?
Even when it does save you the trouble of five whole novels. ;-)
"Let's write twelve books!"
Awww, such adorable hubris.
Now, in my defense, twelve books matches the twelve speakers who are (or will become) the central heroes of the series. Also, twelve has a particular symmetry that I've always loved, as well as a great deal of mythological, literary, and spiritual significance.
To date we only have four books written, and the fourth one is only a weak, wee little baby of a first draft. In the intervening seven, eight-ish years since Laura and I started writing together, many things have changed, including our respective writing journeys, the direction of the series, and that precious bliss of Inspiration-High!!! we had when we began.
I was muddling all of this aloud to a coworker over lunch last Thursday, and unbidden, I tacked this onto the end of a completely different point I'd been making, "... unless we just write fewer books to end the series."
It was like someone hit my brain with the writer's equivalent of jumper cables. For the rest of the lunch I became the worst conversation partner ever, and as soon as I got back to my desk at work I hastily scrambled up an email to Laura, explaining what had happened, a proposal, and some specifics to support it. After waiting 5 minutes, I picked up my phone to call her and ask her to check her email if at all convenient. She did. And didn't hesitate one fraction of a second in agreeing with me.
In short, Restoration is no longer going to total twelve books, but seven. It will probably require pulling apart over half of Book 3, but the good news is, by my estimation we are about halfway done with the total necessary work for the series.
It's such a weight off of my mind, and Laura's too, and it's renewed my excitement for the series and the characters. I think they're going to be stronger for it. Hilariously, the series is going to end up having a much stronger element of "Stop the evil empire", which we were desperately hoping to avoid, but what's good enough for Star Wars, Avatar:tLA, and countless others is surely good enough for us. Anyway, there's also a tolerably more benevolent Empire too. ;-)
What's truly amazing, in hindsight, is how long it took for us to come to this. I have a notoriously bad habit of complacency with the status quo. It's not that I'm even stubborn about it sometimes, it's just I truly don't see some other possibility because there's a way that works and it's good for me, so why look elsewhere?
Even when it does save you the trouble of five whole novels. ;-)