Hello, dreamers. It’s WIP Wednesday.

At last, I’m falling into a rhythm. I’ve begun cranking out a chapter a night. And while much of what I’ve been doing has just been editing what I’d written previously, I’ve been averaging 2-3k words of new text per night. As of this writing, I’m approaching my first major milestone. That said, here’s the latest on my current work-in-progress:

Aquarius 1

I’m writing this on Tuesday night, having just finished chapter 1.5. Originally, this was the final chapter of phase one of the book. But after tonight, I’ve realized I still have one chapter to go. Hopefully I can knock that one out tomorrow night. That will leave me to enjoy the holiday without unfinished business looming over my shoulder.

My experience over the past week has confirmed what I’d long suspected: what I’d written previously was hollow, but represented the clear framework of a good story. Nothing underscored that like my first action sequence. Though I’d done precious little with interiority, to the point where the POV was often unclear, I’d spent a lot of time mapping this out. I produced diagrams of the positions of two astronauts on EVA, and plotted my way through the crew assessing problems and determining a solution.

Now, I’m giving myself a final chapter. This last chapter will give Karen her first reach chance to shine, before bookending the entire phase and setting things up for the next one. Once that’s done, I’ll have an entire phase of this story in the books (so to speak). I generally take a little time away from a story after completing a phase, after which I do some serious editing and research before trudging on.

As always, the approach of Thanksgiving means National Novel Writing Month is nearing its end. So, on Saturday, my weekly NaNoWriMo update will be replaced with this year’s retrospective. Most likely, next week will be downtime for me as far as Aquarius 1 is concerned. I’ll be devoting my time to research, plotting, and working on other projects (including the upcoming querying of Pioneers and my short fiction projects). So until next week, dare to dream. – MK