#WIPMarathon May Update

It's time for another #WIPMarathon update, hosted by the lovely Ifeoma Dennis!

Last report wordcount: I'd finished a rewrite of Beneath the Waves at 60K (YA fantasy), some minor revisions to Indestructible (YA post-apocalyptic), and started rewriting the sequel (37K and counting).

Current report wordcount:  I did another quick editing pass and managed to get Beneath the Waves up to 65K, then won a free full manuscript critique in a contest, so the manuscript's off for another full edit!

I wrote 31K of my post-apocalyptic sequel, finishing the draft at 68K! As I said in one of my weekly updates, this series is odd because I'm rewriting one book as two (expanding a duology into a trilogy). This is because I tried to cram far too much into one book the first time (I was actively trying to avoid writing a trilogy, but I realised the story would work better as a longer series. Such is life!). So a fair bit of the writing involved reworking what I've already written.

Word count of Book 3 so far: 38K! (Some of that's from the original draft.)

I also did the final proofread of Nemesis (Alliance, #2)! So close to publication! *bounces*

I put my DW outlines away because a) I should definitely not be planning another series right now and b) my brain's been in high fantasy mode all month, so I decided to focus on researching/outlining my next fantasy trilogy instead (the one I've been working on sporadically since February). I accidentally wrote the first 5000 words, so I'll probably start it sooner than I planned. :P

WIP issues this month: First drafts. *sigh* This one was particularly difficult because it went completely off the rails in the original version, and I kept continually re-outlining and changing my mind about pretty major issues... like who lives and dies, for example. :P It's post-apocalyptic, so pretty much anything goes...


Four things I learned this month in writing:

• I'm not a natural in-depth outliner. I think it's time to accept that I can't write an exact event-by-event synopsis before writing the book. With the Alliance series, I had the overall "journey" of each book figured out in advance, but because the characters took control of the reins in the last half of Adamant, it meant reworking most of the other outlines to fit in with what I now knew about the characters. Certain events were set in stone, but the order and the exact details of how things played out were constantly in flux. I use beat sheets and plot points to keep on track, but I'm definitely a plotser at heart. (Although I do find it helpful to outline scenes in rough note form by hand just before I write them, like I did with Adamant. Another tip I picked up from Rachel Aaron's 2K-10K!)
• Think about everything in terms of the story. Actually, this is more of a 2014 lesson, but I'm reminded of it every time I plan a new series. I almost always start with the worldbuilding first, because I'm an ideas-driven writer (all of my books come from a concept I want to write about). But I've made the mistake of spending ages building a world before, only to realise that most of the stuff I have written down just won't work with the story I'm planning. I have whole Scrivener documents of nothing but worldbuilding... but no story. So now I try to keep the plot and characters in mind first. (Generally, this involves figuring out what will make my characters' lives the most difficult. I mean, interesting. ;))
• Endings are hard, especially series endings. With post-apocalyptic, it's especially tricky. If everyone lives, readers say it's unrealistic. If everyone dies, you get complaints that it's too depressing. If you leave it mid-action, people are unsatisfied. And then you get readers who want a perfect epilogue with wedding bells and happily-ever-after... which is totally appropriate for the apocalypse. Not. :P I've seen these complaints at the end of every dystopian/post-apocalyptic trilogy. There really doesn't seem to be a way to satisfy everyone! Personally, I'm a fan of the "we survived (well, some of us did. ;))" ending and leaving the rest to the readers' imaginations. But that's just me. :P
• I always need to be working on a draft. Getting back into drafting after spending nearly two months on edits was incredibly hard. I know I can juggle edits on one project with drafting another, but when I stopped drafting completely, the inner editor was on ALL THE TIME. Great for edits, terrible for planning new projects, because I was killing ideas before I gave them a chance. So I'm back to working on more than one project at once. Neither of these projects is as crazily complicated as the Alliance series, so that might be why I'm not having as much trouble juggling them! Plus they're pretty different: my YA post-apocalyptic's in first person present tense, while the fantasy series is multi-POV third person past. 

What distracted me this month when writing: Still having focus issues, but I think it's because I'm a crazy multitasker who has to have seven billion things on the go at the same time. I also need to be chained to my desk to keep from running off and getting distracted. :P

Goal for next month: Try not to get too distracted when Nemesis comes out! :D

Finish this draft. Maybe do a read-through of the whole post-apocalyptic trilogy for continuity.

Also, finish the outlines and planning for my next fantasy series.

Last 200 words: I'm writing the final book in a trilogy, sooo... spoilers. :P