Hello, dreamers.

As planned, I took a week off from Aquarius 1, and it was helpful. Freed from the need to keep pushing forward, I took some time to work on background for this group of novels, which was very helpful. This week, I’m back at it, but I have a lot more projects to juggle. That said, here’s what I’ll be up to this week:

Aquarius 1

With NaNoWriMo over, I feel less pressure to push forward on Aquarius 1, so I’m taking my time. After spending much of last week engrossed in research for overall background, this week I’ll be focusing on notes for the upcoming phase.

While writing the first draft, I made some sweeping changes to Phase 2, much of which deal with cutting it down and condensing it. At the time, I did this because I had written a major subplot involving Anita. In the end, I began worrying that introducing a new cast of minor characters around her, and separating her from the ship and crew, made the story needlessly complex. I was also starting to worry that I was focusing too much on Anita (as I’ve said before, at the time I was following a lot of the bad writing advice out there, and was convinced I had to have a single main character).

But now that I’ve embraced Anita Powell as a POV character, I’m planning to return this subplot to the story. So as it currently stands, the coming phase will deal primarily with the ship arriving in orbit of Jann. Anita will lead a team of engineers to repair the damaged Leveratto space probe, while Karen will remain on the ship and begin to settle into her role.

I’m going to be getting into some choppy emotional stuff, particularly with Karen. Since writing the first draft, I’ve dramatically altered her relationship with her mother, which will come out for the first time in the coming chapters. It’ll be tough, but I’m eager to see how this turns out.

Querying Pioneers

As I mentioned in last week’s “Dear Sir or Madam” post, I’ve decided this year I’ll be heading into the querying trenches. My query process will begin in earnest in January. That leaves me with a lot of work to do.

While I love Aquarius 1, I’m faced with a simple calculus: Pioneers is ready (or at least close) for publication. Aquarius 1 isn’t even close to being complete. Thus, while I intend to keep at it with Aquarius 1, much of the rest of the year will be devoted to Pioneers.

I believe I’ve written before on her about what I call the “Perfection Trap”. It’s a phenomenon that affects all writers at some point. Basically, it goes like this:

First, you write a story (typically this happens with novels). It’s really, really good. Better than anything else you’ve ever written. You finish the first draft. Then you edit. Then it’s done, and it’s time to write something new.

But instead of moving on to another project, you stick with what you’ve already written. You tell yourself that yes, it’s good, but you can make it better. So you go through again and make changes. And this is where the trap starts.

You see, the problem is, you don’t actually make any serious changes, because you already think it’s really good. But you keep making minor changes, not actually improving it, but staying put because you like working on something that’s already complete and looks like an excellent piece.

For years, I’ve been afraid of the Perfection Trap. I’ve worked to avoid it mainly by telling myself, after I’ve written and edited a piece, “Okay, it’s done.” At some point, I cut myself off from making changes, because I don’t want to end up in a position where I’m just fiddling away with something instead of moving on.

But the thing is, it’s okay to make changes, so long as they’re substantive. A lot has changed since I first began Pioneers. The story as it’s written now is very, very different from the original version, which itself was very, very different from my original notes. And my writing has changed dramatically over the past few years. If I can make changes to Pioneers using what I’ve learned, don’t I owe it to myself to make this the best version of the novel before I start putting it out there?

In just the past year, my writing style has changed dramatically, and I think I’m a much better writer for it. So, this week I’ll be continuing a process I began last week. I’m making a final pass through Pioneers. During this pass, I’m going to be working on bringing out interiority with the POV characters. I’m considering changing the POV of several chapters, or at least certain scenes. I want to make sure I’m telling this story faithfully from behind the characters’ eyes. And, I believe by doing this, I’ll be better preparing myself for writing my synopses and query letter.

However, time is of the essence. Any substantive changes will necessitate a subsequent editing pass to check for typos. At this point, I have, at best, a little over a month to wrap everything up and have all my querying materials ready. Factor in time for critiques, and I’m up against the clock. With all this plus the holidays approaching, there’s a real possibility I won’t be doing any actual writing on Aquarius 1 until the new year.

Short Fiction

If, in fact, Pioneers soaks up the bulk of my writing time, I’ll likely pivot my actual writing away from Aquarius 1 and back to short fiction. I did, in fact, hit upon a new story idea last week. For better or for worse, the story quickly ballooned into a new novel concept, one so complex that it could well take years of tough research to prepare for it. Given everything I have on my plate right now, after several days of research and notes I reluctantly put it aside.

Starting today, I’ll be going back to my daily sketches, to see what shakes out. I’ve loved everything I’ve written over the past few months, and I’ve no doubt another new story idea will present itself before the end of the week.

New Content

This week, I’ll finally be giving readers a more thorough introduction to my new book series, When We Left Earth. So keep reading, and as always, dare to dream. – MK