You can tell it’s spring because it’s been cloudy and rainy all week. It was sunny for a few minutes today, but that was amid dark angry thunderclouds of doom. I actually like cloudy rainy weather; it makes the world smell like Spring.
New Novel is… well “chugging along” might be a bit of an overstatement, but things are sort of moving in a forwardly direction. I think I’m in the intermediary zone of first drafting between “not started” and “full steam ahead”—I need like one more thing to click before this process turns into a true first draft fire. But I’m chipping away at it. Amazing how long it’s been since I started a first draft.
Old Novel (maybe I need some codenames…) is still simmering. My beta readers have given me some good things to think about, so I am thinking.
I don’t really have a plan, like, “this first draft is going to take me four months, then I will revise my other novel again” or “I am going to let old novel sit for five weeks and then revise again, no matter where I am with new novel.” Planning: not my strong suit. So we’ll see how it goes.
In the meantime, life is busy and filled with rain.
I’ve found that I can’t set a time frame for going back to an older manuscript. There has to be a Great Conjunction of events for it to feel right, hahaha. Seriously, though, I have to give it enough time to feel like I’m reading it for the first time, or I’ll just feel like I’m dragging myself through somebody’s rose bush.
It’s been a while since I wrote a new novel, too. I’m somewhere around 5,000 words in. Sometimes it’s like a fever and I just can’t stop, and others I’m dragging myself through someone else’s muddy garden. I’m looking forward to hitting that point where I’m comfortable enough with the characters that it kind of starts writing itself. (Are we there yet? …Are we there yet?)
Good luck with your new novel. Fingers crossed that you hit that rocket writing point soon, too.