With the euphoria of completing a project dying down, it’s time to get back to work.  As I always say, the work of an aspiring writer is never done, and I have a lot to do.  I’m getting a better picture of the direction on Pathfinder, and there’s plenty more to work on besides.  Here’s what’s coming this week:

Pathfinder

As I began to reassess Pathfinder following my late winter hiatus, it was clear that reworking was needed.  While I had a vague direction, I was sparse on details.  The story had evolved aimlessly, the characters were one-dimensional, and my overall disappointment led to frustration, ultimately moving me to abandon the story.  Pathfinder, and all subsequent stories in the planned series, deserve better.  For years, this has been my beloved pet project.  This story needs to be written.  I needed to do better.

On the bright side, this past week I managed to flesh out some details regarding the plot.  I now feel I have a firm direction; I know what the climax of the novel will look like, have a better idea of how everyone will get there.  But the characters still need work.  This was thrown into stark relief as I attempted to write a scene from the climax.  While I believe I did well with the imagery overall, the interactions between the two characters felt canned; I didn’t really feel any sort of rapport, any sort of bond, between them.  I didn’t know enough about them, didn’t know everything they’d gone through to get to that point.

This week, I plan to focus on character notes in conjunction with rewriting at the beginning of the story.  This approach, I hope will help me to better understand the characters.  After all, I tweaked my character notes in Wide Horizon several times over the course of my writing, simply because something I’d written felt right, even though it went against my original concept for the character.

Wide Horizon

This week, I plan to contact my editor regarding a final round of edits.  I’ll admit a part of me is content to shop the novel as is, but then I felt the same way after completing my first draft, so I’m not sure how good of a judge I am on this.  Besides, my editor herself had asked that she take a final look at what I did to change the story, and I can’t help but thinking that the final two chapters could yet benefit from a fresh pair of eyes.

We’ll see how long this process takes.  My editor, Lauren, is diligent, but she wears a lot of hats.  I would say she’s busy like I am, but I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone quite so busy.  Lauren is one of those types who seems to desperately fear down time.  At latest count she had three jobs, and while plenty of millennials have second or third jobs to get by, any one of hers would be an all-consuming career for most people.

As such, I am often torn between my instinct to assert my will as a writer and my reluctance to make demands of her time.  But, if I’m going to share this story with the world (and I want to), I owe it to myself, to her, and to my eventual readers to make sure I put the best possible product out there for consumption.  So I should probably get in touch with her before she decides to pursue yet another advanced degree, which is a real possibility.

Short Fiction

While I finished The Spaceman this past weekend, my Google Drive folders are still overflowing with unfinished work.  In fact, I have an entire file filled with potential stories I’ve barely touched in ages.  Each one of those stories needs its own file, and doing so could very well double the number of stories in progress.  It would feel good to make serious progress on a few of them.

On the bright side, a recent issue of Authors Publish Magazine seems to have been written just for me: a list of over two dozen journals that publish science fiction.  This comes as no small relief, as I’d begun to feel that I’d exhausted my submission targets for my current manuscripts.  So, sometime this week I plan to run through the list and put out a fresh round of submissions.  It’s been far too long since I put myself out there, and the last time I got close on a few of my pieces.  Hopefully, this time around I’ll finally be able to see my work in print.

 

I have a busy week ahead of me, but one that I feel will see great progress made on numerous projects.  I’ll keep reading, so long as you keep dreaming. – MK