Unpacking Continues—But So Do Rewrites

We’re still settling into our new house in Ohio, and I’m not nearly as far along with my unpacking as I’d hoped. We’re getting the floors redone (some gnarly old carpets need to be ripped up), so I can’t even move most of my furniture into its final resting place yet...which doesn’t help matters. Thus, about 75% of my belongings are still boxed up in the basement or garage. But hey, at least we have a garage now so that I actually have a place to keep these things for the time being.

Thus, I haven’t done nearly as much writing lately—and almost no musicing or arting or running—as I’d like. And those are the activities that keep me sane, so I’ve been strung a little tighter, too. That said, I have managed to squeeze in a few decent writing sessions over the past few weeks, so I haven’t been entirely unproductive. I recently finished another round of edits on The Night Chemist (working title...and I’ve actually started brainstorming new ones that I feel like might fit it a bit better) and dove into a serious round of rewrites on The Blood Alchemist (another working title which I am considering updating) after receiving feedback from my critique partners.

Most of the major rewrites for TBA (hereafter known as book 2) are confined to the beginning. The previous version opens the morning after the first book leaves off, but that doesn’t make for a particularly compelling first chapter. My first draft tends to go straight through chronologically, with a lot of narrative describing how my characters get from point A to point B in each scene. Unfortunately, much as I love to know every minute detail of every day, that also doesn’t make for a particularly compelling read. I don’t want to leave any plot holes unfilled or threads dangling. So for this round of edits, I’m focusing on cutting some of the fluff and working that narrative—and those threads—into more active scenes. It’s slow going, but it’s going, and it will ultimately make for a better book.

However, I don’t just delete wholescale sections as I rearrange and rewrite; I keep a separate document in case I need to work in a paragraph or a sentence here or there, or if I decide to put something back in later. Since so many beta readers for book 1 wanted to know more about [major spoiler], and that [major spoiler] was pretty much all of chapter one of book 2...I’m keeping that whole chapter to later send out as bonus content, once book 1 is officially published. Whenever in the nebulous future that occurs.

All for now. Alas, the unpacked boxes are demanding my attention.