Wandering Wizards is really starting to tick me off. As I’m sure I mentioned before, I wrote the first half of it during NaNoWriMo, but I wrote it with only a vague idea of what was going on because it was part of a series and I hadn’t finished the book before it. And now I’m paying the price.
There were changes to be made; it was almost a whole new book. But silly me, I thought it would be faster/easier to incorporate as many of those 50,000 words into the new version than to just start from scratch. And yeah, a lot of what I’d written can be used pretty much verbatim, but a lot of it can ... not.
Along with a lot of little changes, there were a couple of big ones. One of these changes involved a crucial piece of information that was found near the beginning, and then repeated later on with no indication we’d read it before. Would it be better left in the beginning or later on? Decisions, decisions. I spent about a week changing and re-changing the beginning to set up the inclusion of the crucial information later on, and then started reading from the beginning, and ... almost immediately ran into another section that needs to be changed, this time to agree with something I wrote in the previous book.
Man! And I thought the previous book was the story that never ends! Although I guess it’s not the story itself, just the writing of it that seems never ending.
So why, you may ask, don’t I just soldier on and finish the darn thing, then go back and make changes? Because that’s what I did with the previous book, and the editing was a nightmare. Changing stuff as I go along is more like just a very bad dream. LOL
Wordage Report
Blog Posts (not counting this one)
3,811 words total
Not bad if I do say so myself. Although I missed last week’s update post so the word count is from the week previous to that. But this past week not only did I get all of my posts done, they were up on time. Mostly.
Reading/Reviews
0 words total
Still haven’t been doing the reviews of the books I’ve been reading lately, but at least I’m keeping track of them. I finished a boxed set of SEAL action/romances on the Kindle - man, were they good! If you have a chance to read anything by Sharon Hamilton, do so. You won’t be sorry. Then I found another from that series and kind of devoured it in one sitting. And I finished A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain - it was a nice change from all that SEAL action. ;-)
Editing
0 hours total
While I did get some editing on Elemental Earth, it wasn’t as much as I’d planned. But any progress is good progress at this point. I even went so far as to buy myself a carrot -- the latest Lynsay Sands book. I'm not allowed to read it until the edits are done. I’ve come up with a vague idea for the cover, too. I just lack the PhotoShopping skills to make it happen. ;-)
New Words
11,752 words total
Before you get all impressed with the large number (for a change) remember that we need to spread that over two weeks. And I have to be honest here and admit that some of those words were already written, just needed some judicious editing.
Weekly Goals:
Last week (or two):
Did not finish editing Earth.
Did not start An Elemental Spirit.
I surpassed my 2,000 word goal for Wandering Wizards, but only because it’s been two weeks since I updated here (again).
This week:
Continue, if not finish, the edits on An Elemental Earth.
Minimum of 2,000 new words on Wandering Wizards.
Start catching up on my book reviews.
Since it’s really the only thing I have going on at the moment, once again the excerpt is from Wandering Wizards:
The hour was growing late and it was decided they would stay the night as Aracelia’s guests and start off in the morning. While Howard and Aracelia chatted amiably about magic, Ellen remained quiet at dinner that evening. Without her anger to sustain her, she was finally feeling the impact of what had happened.
“You are troubled,” Kaelan observed.
“I was just thinking that my parents must be going out of their minds with worry,” she said, picking at her food. “I didn’t exactly have time to let them know I’d be going away.”
“I’m sorry,” Howard said, looking a little guilty. “I should have told you what I was up to.”
She waved him off. “What’s done is done.”
“Perhaps I could get a message to them,” Aracelia said thoughtfully. “I am sure I would be able to open a portal small enough for a wind imp to slip through.”
“A wind imp?” Ellen asked.
“Each of the elements have creatures linked to them. A wind imp is the most useful of the air elemental beings.”
She sent one of the servants for a quill and paper.
“This is so cool!” Ellen said, dipping the quill into the small bottle of ink. She wrote a deliberately vague message to her parents about a sick friend who desperately needed her help, apologizing for the short notice and asking them to let the boutique where she worked know that she’d need a leave of absence.
When it was dry Aracelia folded it carefully and summoned the wind imp. It was smaller than the letter the elf gave it to carry, invisible but for an indistinct outline of its body. “Hold the image of your parents’ home in your mind,” she told Ellen.
Ellen did as she was told and Aracelia muttered a gutteral sounding incantation under her breath. A small hole opened up in the air in front of her and the wind imp, carrying the letter, slipped through.
Ellen couldn’t hold back a smirk.
“What?” Howard asked her.
“Gives a whole new meaning to the term, ‘air mail’, doesn’t it?”
The pair of them laughed while the others at the table remained mystified as to what was so funny.
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