I did it! I finally finished the first draft of The Dead Beat, volume 2. It was a difficult manuscript, though still not as headache-inducing as Sword of Dreams was. Nothing in The Dead Beat worked! Events didn’t fit together properly. Reveals didn’t fall into line. It all worked about as well as a bicycle made of jam.
It still sucks. But that’s the great thing about first drafts. They’re not done. I’m high on the victory buzz of finishing another book (and at 50,000 words, volume 2 of The Dead Beat is indeed a full book), but now I get to step away from the project for a few weeks. A few months, preferably. When I come back, the pain of writing the first draft will have faded and I can look at my work with fresh eyes. Issues that seem so scream worthy right now will be easy fixes in a few months.
Other writers used to recommend shelving work after the first draft, and I never listened. No, I was too full of mad ambition for that. Leave my glorious loaf of literature to rot, untouched, for weeks? Madness! …Until circumstances forced me to put away a first draft so I could work on something more pressing. When I finally got around to it again, I was astonished how much easier it was to pick out and fix the flaws! Goodness, I guess all those seasoned professionals just might know what they’re talking about.
Oh, I’m lecturing again. Sorry about that!
The important part is that I’m done with The Dead Beat for now. Stories 10 through 21 are written. I’ll come back to them in about three months, when eFiction will be needing some new installments. Until then, I’ll be editing Aron’s first solo effort, a guide to storytelling table-top RPGs. After that, I get to begin on Hammer of Time! It’s been fun to write the trilogies, but I’m looking forward to more standalone novels.
