Here’s the deal. I have this novel series I’ve been working on. The first version of it, I wrote from 1999 to 2003. It was about 240,000 words, so not exactly short. For a long time, it sat around as I considered what to do with it, worked on other things, had periods in which I wasn’t writing much of anything, etc.
At some point I might relate how this series came to be in the first place. There’s a bit of a story there, too. In any case, I took a stab at rewriting it in 2010. I did not get far. I spent some time regrouping, and in 2013, I gave it another shot for National Novel Writing Month. This attempt went much better. I had a goal in mind for how much of the story I wanted to tell, and I did it. I needed much longer than a single month, though–I didn’t finish that draft until February. Soon, I had it handed off to a friend who agreed to do some editing for me.
In 2014, I did it again. Once again, I knew how much of the story I wanted to tell in that iteration, and I pulled it off. This one was longer and took until April or so. Isn’t that always the way with a book series, with each novel being longer than the one before? I currently have another friend editing that book.
It would be easy to look at the dates and wonder what happened to 2015. That’s easy: I started a blog in October of 2015 and focused on that for a year. I blogged about politics, science, technology, society, pop culture, and other stuff. You’re welcome to check it out. It would keep you busy reading for a while. My goal was to do that blog for a year, and I did.
So here we are, about to enter November of 2016, and it’s time to dive into this series again. I’m ready: I wrote a 10,000 word story treatment for it over the past week, covering everything I plan to do this time around.
What I have failed to answer so far is just what purpose this blog will serve. The truth is, I’m not sure yet. Maybe it’s a way of keeping myself accountable. Maybe it’s a security blanket on the heels of having spent the last year updating a blog every day. Maybe it’s a crude form of advertising. It’s not like I’m selling these books yet. My demented plan is to write the entire series before I go about selling it. That will be something like four or five books. We’ll see.
But tomorrow is when the real fun begins. Expect things around here to change over time as I get this blog set up how I want. Don’t be alarmed. Everything’s gonna be just fine.