Step by Step
We're getting closer to being ready to head for Elkhart, Indiana for Hall of Heroes Comic Con this weekend. I retrieved four boxes from the storage unit that I'd forgotten to load on Saturday. They are now in the van, along with the table we were using as a workspace for getting our taxes ready to go. I have a couple more boxes that still need to go out, and we're also waiting for consignment merchandise to get here.
Meanwhile, I'm hard at work on the writing. It's interesting to go through the 2001 text of the later part of The Steel Breeds True. The last five or ten chapters feel rushed, as if I were hurrying toward the ending so hard that I just didn't develop that part of the novel nearly as well as the first third.
Given that I wrote it two decades ago, back in the days when traditional publishing was the only game in town, it's possible that I was approaching a (real or perceived) length limit on what would be a saleable book, and was trying to hold it down. Or it could've been that I'd reached a point in which I was just plain tired of working on it, wanted it done, and raced to the finish line instead of doing it properly. This is not unknown -- even some pretty big names in indie writing talk about their first readers or even beta readers telling them that it looks like they got tired of working on something and just summarized the ending instead of actually writing it.
So I'm going to have to think about the last part of this novel a lot more carefully. I'm hoping that my subconscious will have time to let it percolate while I'm busy with the first three shows of the year (done in four weeks) and be able to help me develop the ending properly when things slow down in April and May.
In the meantime, I'll be working on the shorter stuff, which is easier to handle in bits and pieces of broken time.
Meanwhile, I'm hard at work on the writing. It's interesting to go through the 2001 text of the later part of The Steel Breeds True. The last five or ten chapters feel rushed, as if I were hurrying toward the ending so hard that I just didn't develop that part of the novel nearly as well as the first third.
Given that I wrote it two decades ago, back in the days when traditional publishing was the only game in town, it's possible that I was approaching a (real or perceived) length limit on what would be a saleable book, and was trying to hold it down. Or it could've been that I'd reached a point in which I was just plain tired of working on it, wanted it done, and raced to the finish line instead of doing it properly. This is not unknown -- even some pretty big names in indie writing talk about their first readers or even beta readers telling them that it looks like they got tired of working on something and just summarized the ending instead of actually writing it.
So I'm going to have to think about the last part of this novel a lot more carefully. I'm hoping that my subconscious will have time to let it percolate while I'm busy with the first three shows of the year (done in four weeks) and be able to help me develop the ending properly when things slow down in April and May.
In the meantime, I'll be working on the shorter stuff, which is easier to handle in bits and pieces of broken time.