Writing Update: 19/07/24 (Patreon)

Start of week: 40,204

End of week: 46,853

Change: +6,649

Year to Date: 154,036

Finished Reading: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk  

Currently Reading: Normal People, by Sally Rooney; Show Girl, by Alyson Greaves.

Drive Your Plow... was a recommend off of social media platform Bluesky, and a fantastic read. It's a brillliant example in how to write a first person unreliable narrator; Tokarczuk totally immerses the reader in the perspective of the slightly-mad older woman who tells the story in what feels a bit like a bit of Scandi-noir flavour wrapped around an Agathy Christie novel. Important men keep dying, and the narrator believes its the Natural world taking its revenge. Fantastic--I only wish I could write so well.

Meanwhile, I've started publishing Constant over on Scribblehub. Weirdly, it never really occured to me that there might be potential readers who don't visit Fictionmania or TGSTorytime--but, yeah, it's a whole different world of amateur fiction over there. Book One's landed well. As part of checking out the site, I was recommended to try Alyson Greaves' work so I've started reading Show Girls. I'm only a few chapters in, but it's good fun so far. She's also given me a bit of advice on self-publishing, which was very kind of her.

As for my own writing... a very painful start to the week; the current scene's been a nightmare to work through. I've written and rewritten it at least three times, each with a different nuance pulling the plot in a different direction. The word counts hides that kind of effort, the stuff that ends on the cutting room floor or edited into oblivion. It's a sort of milestone scene, with Julia pushing David towards experiences he'd rather not have, and getting it right has been tricky; I think you'll see why when posted here.

I think the current iteration works, though, and it's been decent progress since. I've been saying for nearly a month now that I'd "finish the current chapter next week" but I think it's actually true, now. Chapter four ends with some major plot progression. It's a bit dark, though; not entirely sure how I feel about that, to be honest.

Chapter 3-4 is now available for all paying members. You should've also received notification of edits to Book 2, Chapter 1 - as part of posting it to Scribblehub, I had a quick read through and restored some edits I'd previously made. A lot of the old Interlude got cut, and I stuck some of it back in. Overall, I think the part of the Book 2 prologue where K and Scooter and Crystal discuss David's fate remains weak; it's something to revise properly in the future.

And I think that's everything! Phew, long update this week.

Coming up:

Saturday: Song of Silk and Shadows, part one added to the archive

Sunday: Song of Silk and Shadows, part two added to the archive

Monday: Sneak Peek from chapter 4

Tuesday: Potentially, a piece of fan art

Wednesday: Chapter 4-4 for Constant tier members and above

Thursday: Fan Art by Fraylim

Friday: Weekly update.

... finally, I've been writing pretty much daily since the start of the year. We crossed the 150k word threshold this week. And most of that word count's edited writing, too--a lot of hidden labour in stuff that never sees the light of day. Against the backdrop of a full time job and real-world responsibilities, I'm feeling just a wee bit tired. I might just need to catch up on some sleep, but I suspect I'm feeling a bit of mental drain as well. I'll probably need to take a week off in the near future to recharge my batteries a bit. Not -next- week, mind, because I want to get the chapter done. Just saying at some point over the next month or two, I'll probably step back for a week to rest.