Time has been in short supply these days, but I’ve usually managed to carve out some space for writing. I’m still coming up on the midpoint of the novel and damned if I’m not excited about it.

I don’t know why I’m so surprised at myself at how much I’m enjoying working on this book. Who would spend so much time writing something you didn’t want to, right? I think a large part of it is comparing this novel to my last one. The last book was a fantasy adventure story. It had some great kernels in there that really got me going in the beginning. When I go back and look at the worldbuilding, what at the time felt lush, I see now is really only half baked. There are a few things though: a magic system, a religion maybe, definitely some of the animals, that will show up in my later works. They’re just too cool not too.

The other novel was also the first time that I tried writing a book from multiple perspectives. That ended up being a mixed bag as more than half of them were on the same crew together. Oh right, yes, they were on a sailing ship looking for an ancient secret. When it’s laid out like that, it sounds kind of dull doesn’t it? Anyway, so there were only so many times when the crew would split up – usually fight scenes – that would require different viewpoints to tell the story. Other than that, they often had the same objective. I was just telling it from a different angle each time.

I spent a long time on that book. So much that a third of the way in I felt like I still wasn’t getting the characters right. I scrapped everything and started over. It only added to the overall time commitment. I’ve mentioned before that my rule of thumb is to hit 1k words a day. That’s a minimum as the story progresses. Well, as the book was drawing to a close, I was hitting my 1k, but it was broken up into 500 here, 500 there as I fluttered around it like a hummingbird. I couldn’t bring myself to crank out everything in one go. Whatever had drawn me into that world initially, I had lost by the end. What should have been an exciting build to a conclusion I’d spent months working toward was just some event I couldn’t get to fast enough.

“What happened to that novel?” you ask …

It’s sitting in a digital trunk somewhere. Normally, I dust it off again a few months later for some editing, but that one is still only the rough draft. One of these days I may go back and see what’s what but for now I have other things to do.

Do I regret it? No. There are some good ideas in there that I got to play with and will hopefully see again. I was disappointed for a while and felt like I had nothing to show for my efforts. I don’t make my living off of my writing so there’s only so much time in the day that I can devote to it. Every day that doesn’t produce results is a wasted opportunity. That said, I may not have a viable product with that old novel but it taught me a hell of a lot if only in lessons of what not to do. I’m definitely a stronger writer because of it.

We may yet see a future for Edison Pearce, Annika Draey and the crew of the Gallow’s Ticket, but for now, they were lessons in multiple viewpoints, characterization and running with what made sense over what the plot demanded. I wish them well on wherever their adventures take them and think of them often.