MOPNoWriMo Day 11: Under the Surface (9/2/2012)

Day eleven: Target wordcount: 55000. Words written: 55000

Four . . . Days . . . Without . . . Skyrim . . . Must . . . Fight . . . More . . . Bandits . . . Must . . . Shout . . .

A brief aside: The Order of the Scales is just out in the UK in its small paperback form.This is my favourite cover from the UK editions. The Order of the Scales is also out in hardback in the US, and the King of the Crags is out in both France and the US in small paperback form. Nothing new here, but its a joy to have my name next to so many magnificent dragons :-)

ORDER OF THE SCALES draft coverOrder+of+the+Scales+USA Cover artLe_Roi_des_cimes cover

Back to the project: Facebook does not fit in when you have 5-6 working hours a day and are trying to write a novel in a  month. Sorry Facebook friends. I’ve just had a mail from my agent asking if I’m OK because I haven’t replied to a couple of mails, so it’s not just you.

Two more chapters done. Lots of fighting yesterday and this tomb business has sparked a whole pile of ideas about the world and its history that will mean yet more work in the revisions, and not only for this book (this being the second in a sequence). I always try to have the first draft of one book written before the one before come back from the editor, because this always happens – each story adds to the world and the characters as well as the storylines, and if at all possible, I like to put some of those ideas back into earlier books yo show hints of what will be coming later. Ideally I’d get a whole series drafted before submitting the first volume. That’s rarely practical, but at the very least I aim to have the first draft and first revision of the next book done before I get the previous MS back from my editor. I suppose I assume that most authors writing series aim for something similar, but it’s not something I’ve talked about much so I don’t know.

I didn’t quite finish a chapter last night, but left it hanging to finish today. I like to do this as noted before because it helps me to get back into the flow each day, but it has another advantage. Last night, one character was about to do something that I thought at the time was a no-brainer. This morning I’m not so sure. It makes them cross a line I’m not sure they’re ready to cross, and more particularly, I’m not sure that those around them are prepared for it either. So maybe instead they’ll walk up to that line and look at it long and hard and then walk away again. Not sure until I get to writing again, but sometimes it’s nice to pause before a character does something like this.

A day off is much in order soon.

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