inverarity | Entries tagged with writing

I have three betas for AQATWA. One is about a third of the way through the book, one is on chapter five, and one is still in the process of rereading the first four books. So work is proceeding — I have made a number of changes already, but they are mostly on the word-and-sentence level. They haven't yet hit any of the Big Honkin' Plot Points that I expect will generate the most discussion, and of course, if there are inconsistencies or major plot holes, some may not be apparent until they've gotten to the end of the book.

AQATWA remains a big book. My manuscript... has not gotten smaller. One beta has already commented on the multiple subplots, and made some suggestions for scenes that could be cut. We'll see, because it depends on how necessary/unnecessary they still think those scenes are once they've reached the end of the book.

Anyway, it's time to reveal... the cover. Well, at least a prototype for the cover.

No wait, let me tease you first and talk about terrible covers. Mainly, mine.

Embarrassingly, for all the time I have spent faffing around with Poser and Photoshop, I have spent quite a lot of time figuring out how to do some highly specific and obscure task, like warping text or creating fire effects, and very little time studying the basics of composition and color theory. I kind of knew what a color wheel was, but never actually paid attention to how they are applied.

Which why I created abominations like my first cover.

Aside from the crappy Photoshop job (don't ask me why I couldn't be bothered to even fix that white artifact on Alexandra's pants leg), whatever possessed me to use yellow font on a green background? Yeah, seriously, I had no idea about contrast, triadic color schemes, etc.

I didn't do much better with the next few books.

So anyway, although I have commissioned quite a few pieces of art for AQATWA, I'm back at the Poser hacking, and I renewed my subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud, so maybe now I will actually try to learn something about color schemes, blending, layers, all that good stuff. But the fact remains, as a digital artist, I'm a pretty fair writer.

So, below the cut is the cover image I commissioned from Katerina Ventova. The art is her work, but the title and author text is mine. I think I chose an appropriately contrasting color this time, and the font size and positioning looks okay to me, but I have a terrible eye for these details, so if there are any typographic designers out there, please speak up and tell me what I can do to make it look better.

This is never going to be a commercial release, of course, but I'd like to at least get my covers a bit more polished.

Leventart, by the way, did a beautiful job, I think, so feel free to click to her DeviantArt page and give her some love. (Or commission her!)

( Alexandra Quick and the World Away - the Cover. )

The first pass is done. I have revised and rewritten and revised some more, and I'm at the "moving words around" stage, which I could do forever, so it's time to unleash this beast on my betas. And so I have.

Word Counts

A funny thing happened in the process of revising this draft.

It got bigger.

I usually think of my first revision as "tightening up," among other things. I slash unnecessary words, sentences, and sometimes entire chapters.

Previous AQ books - indeed, pretty much everything I have written in the past - have very consistently become shorter after my first revision, usually by about 10%. I have never not ended up with a shorter manuscript.

But this one... well, there were indeed several chapters that got completely rewritten, and I found that again and again I was actually adding scenes.

When I first announced the completion of my first draft, in December, the word count was 281,900 words.

My revised draft? 284,400 words.

It may well become smaller in the next iteration - I rather hope so. But it's a bit scary to think about how much bloat this might represent. The fact is, I started writing this book seven years ago, so if ever I've had a manuscript that needs more pairs of eyes on it, it's this one.

I also noticed that I broke chapters up a lot more in this manuscript. Currently, AQATWA contains 61 chapters. That's an average of 4662 words per chapter. By comparison, here is what previous books looked like:

Title (Average words per chapter)
AQATTC, 160,327 words, 29 chapters (5529)
AQATLB, 226,846 words, 37 chapters (6131)
AQATDR, 196,588 words, 31 chapters (6342)
AQATSA, 252,313 words, 39 chapters (6470)

So, right now AQATWA has much shorter chapters. Probably some of them will be combined and/or cut in the editing process. This isn't really a conscious decision I made, but I am not sure if this is just because of the nature of this book, or because my writing style has changed.

Anyway, enough introspection. This is why I went ahead and told my betas to have at it.

Here is some more teaser art. Note that this was just the artist's initial sketch for my approval. The finished piece is absolutely gorgeous.

( Her hair of floating sky is shimmering, glimmering in the sun )

I know I said I probably wouldn't bother doing chapter illustrations this time around, but I finally dusted off my old Poser software (actually, I went and upgraded it to the newest version), and pretty soon found myself fiddling with dials and morphs again. It's kind of addictive once you get started.

I've been using Poser since I first created that horrible cover for Alexandra Quick and the Thorn Circle. I have assembled an extensive library of figures, but I hadn't touched the Alexandra model in years. So I had to age her up a bit. This isn't quite the same figure as the one I used for AQATTC - I think I changed the base model sometime around book three, and now I fiddle with a few settings to make her a little older with each book. I'm always switching hair out - hair is a PITA in the Poser. Better artists just paint hair and clothes in Photoshop, but I can't do that.

I said before that no piece of art ever exactly matches the pictures I have in my head, and this is equally true of the images I create myself. But I admit I've been influenced by years of creating Poser images, so the "Alexandra" who is represented by a collection of props, settings, and morphs injected into a Victoria 3 base comes about as close as I can get.

Anyway, I should probably wait until I'm done editing my manuscript before I start trying to do digital art again. In the meantime, I have a bunch of new commissions done which makes me very happy. Some of them I may share before I start posting the story, and some would be, heh, spoilery.

I am working on Chapter 46 now. This is where a lot of stuff starts to happen. Not that nothing happens in the preceding 46 chapters... but it's building to the climax, while at the same time, a new setting and a ton of new characters are all introduced. And this is where I kind of just plunged ahead to get the first draft finished, and now need to unravel a bunch of silliness and plot holes and numbers and locations that change from one chapter to the next.

Optimistically, I would like to say my target is to get this done by the end of the month. That is not a hard and fast deadline, and I'm taking a vacation at the end of the month, during which not much writing will happen. But it is my hope (not a promise, but right now it looks doable) that I will be able to inflict the next draft on my beta-readers before the end of March.

In the meantime, here's Alexandra, age 15, with a little bit of an Uncanny Valley look because I did no Photoshop postwork.

I'm going to try to do regular updates, so you know work is still progressing.

The good news is, I have been keeping at it and spending much of my free time (re)writing. AQATWA is getting done. I've even started roughly outlining book six.

The bad news is, I've hit the hard part. Until now most of my rewriting was relatively minor, nothing that required major revisions in the story. But then I realized I had to make some significant changes which rippled backwards across many chapters, and then I had an idea, which resulted in more changes. Meanwhile, I have hit a plot hole resulting from my reread of the previous books, and that's going to require a major rewrite of at least one chapter and maybe more. I'll figure out a solution eventually, but today I spent a lot of time staring at my screen grinding my teeth, trying to figure out which of my babies to kill.

My last update fostered debate and discussion! I don't have anything as thought-provoking to share this time around, but I do want to share some fan art. This is some of my favorite fan art of Alex ever:

Alex 11-15 by Amnevitah on DeviantArt

The way Amnevita (who also did this wonderful Thorn family lineup a few years ago) ages Alexandra each year and captures her changing moods is just wonderful. (Alex really is rather dour more often than not, isn't she?)

A lot of people have drawn Alexandra and her friends over the years, and I collect and save every piece I find. (Most people tell me when they've drawn something for me, or they post it where they know I will see it, but now and then I've stumbled upon something on DeviantArt or Tumblr and said "Wow! I had no idea this existed!" So hey — if you draw some Alexandra Quick fan art, please tell me!)

Some pictures come very close to the image I have in my head of my characters, but none are ever quite perfect. This is particularly a challenge when I commission artwork — in that case, I am paying someone to draw exactly what I want, and while I give as much detail as possible, it's simply impossible to transmit an image directly from my head to someone else's, so while I've generally been very happy with the results, I've had to accept that it will always be the artist's interpretation of what I described for them. Of course if I could draw myself, I might get closer to what I want, but I long ago gave up on improving my own drawing ability. The Poser images I created for previous books did manage to get close to my mental image with some of the characters, but are still no more perfect than illustrations done by others.

I know J.K. Rowling has said that the same thing is true for her characters — she liked the actors who played them, and she liked Mary GrandPré's illustrations in the books, but none of them exactly matched the pictures she had in her head of Harry and Hermione and Ron.

But if the writer could put the exact image in his or head on a screen, that wouldn't leave much room for creative interpretation, or for others to imagine the character differently, would it? Which is why I am always delighted to see fan art, even when the interpretation is quite different from what I imagined, because the character is still always recognizable, and I get a little glimpse of what sort of picture my words created in someone else's head.

AQATWA Progress

I'm currently on Chapter 40 in my revisions. 16 chapters to go!

So far, there is not as much wholesale cutting as I expected. I have not actually deleted or moved any chapters in their entirety. I have cut a lot of extraneous text, and changed some other things, but some of those changes have involved actually adding material. So my total word count has only decreased to 277,905. This is still gonna be a long book. (Scarily long. Published books typically average about 250 words per page, which would make AQATWA over 1000 pages!)

I have about half a dozen scenes and three or four major plot points that are still bothering me. I've worked out some of the problems I had, but I always worry about consistency and believability (yes, believability in a YA novel about a secret wizarding world where teenagers carry reality-bending weapons). Like, theoretically any plot problem could be solved with "Just invent a spell for that," right? But actually, no. I am not Brandon Sanderson (who writes meticulously engineering magic systems with very precise rules), but I try to more or less follow Rowling's rules (more on that below), and of course, I can't just have Alexandra dramatically "level up" and start casting spells she never could before without a reasonable explanation.

I do actually maintain a list of all the magic Alexandra has done, so I don't accidentally have her "relearn" a spell she has already used, or conversely, just start assuming she knows how to Apparate when I never described her learning how. Nonetheless, I just know some of my gimlet-eyed readers will catch errors at some point.

r/AlexandraQuick

I'm not a big redditor, but I do browse it sometimes. I only recently discovered that there is an AlexandraQuick subreddit. Apparently it's been around for a few years. Wow.

I will probably not be posting there (sorry, folks). My reddit account is linked to my real name, and I don't create throwaways. But I did read the threads. I liked Alexandra as a D&D 5E character, even though I don't like D&D 5E. (I don't think I'd rate her Intelligence quite that high — Alex is smart, but not a super-genius — but otherwise it looks like a reasonable job given the limitations of representing non-D&D characters using D&D rules.)

I also really enjoyed jackbethimble's prediction brackets for AQATWA, and the speculations it spawned. Hee hee. (I have to admit, some of the things that won't be happening made me think, 'Hey, that's not a bad idea...')

Rowling's American Wizarding World

I have a confession to make: I have not really paid much attention to anything Potteresque since the end of the series. I have not read Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, I have not yet seen either of the Fantastic Beasts movies (though I've read enough reviews and spoilers to think they sound... dumb), and I only recently started poking around on Pottermore and catching up on some of the "canon" that Rowling has apparently been dropping via Tweet.

The only thing worse than an author making up canon on Twitter is a president making up national policy on Twitter. Ahem.

Like, I did a real headdesk when she blithely declared that Hogwarts was a "safe space" — of course.

Dear J.K. Rowling:

Okay, look lady, when you declared Dumbledore gay after the fact, I was willing to buy that you actually envisioned him as gay all along and just never mentioned it in the books because it wasn't relevant in the story. A lot of people were pissed off at you, but I wasn't. I get why others were cynical and suspected you of retconning that for Social Justice cred, but okay, sure, you kinda sorta dropped hints with the Grindelwald relationship, and I'll take you at your word that this was something you always "knew."

But... Hogwarts was a "safe space"? Really? Yeah, "safe" unless you count the allegorical wizard-Nazis who wanted to purge the wizarding world of Mudbloods. But sure, even Slytherins were totally LGBT friendly, right? Are you kidding? I don't buy that this was ever in your head until current year made it an issue.

But whatever. Maybe contemporary Hogwarts is in fact a "safe space." I just feel that Rowling has rather reached the limits of her worldbuilding talents, and just makes up shit that sounds good now.

Case in point: Rowling's American Wizarding World.

I finally read what she posted on Pottermore about the American wizarding world. And it's... not good.

I don't just mean the ridiculous and cavalier way she treated Native Americans. Other people have shredded her plenty for that. Her believing that apparently all Indians were part of one big tribe with homogeneous beliefs and traditions was just symptomatic of her treating America as a cartoon. At best, it's a cheap imitation of England; at worst, it's a silly hodge-podge of whatever Rowling could Wikipedia about early America.

So, the official "canon" American wizarding school is Ilvermorny. Which is basically a Hogwarts knock-off, complete with four schools and a sorting ceremony, and it serves the entire North American continent.

If I started writing Alexandra Quick today, I'd probably have set the story in Ilvermorny, and I'd have incorporated "No-Majs" and "MACUSA" into the setting. But I started writing Alexandra Quick in 2007, when Rowling hadn't said anything at all about the American wizarding world, and pretty much told her fans that if they wanted stories about American wizards, someone else would have to make them up. So I did.

Needless to say, I am not about to go back and rewrite the entire AQ series. As of the end of Deathly Hallows, and for a few years after that, I maintained that AQ was "canon-compliant" — meaning that while I might have made up a lot of stuff Rowling never mentioned, I didn't think anything I wrote actually contradicted her canon. In theory, Alexandra Quick could have coexisted in the "official" Harry Potter universe.

Clearly, that is no longer the case. There is no Ilvermorny in Alexandra's world. American wizards in AQ do not call Muggles "No-Majs," and the Confederation has a Wizard Congress, but not a "MACUSA." Oh, and when European wizards arrived, they did not all just get along with Indian wizards...

Rowling has never been good at expanding Harry Potter beyond its origins as a children's book. Things that don't have to make sense or be deeply thought out when the target audience is 10 begin to break down when the target audience is teens and adults. The wizarding world, of course, does not "make sense" in any way, but it's ridiculous to try to incorporate actual history into it but then pretend that none of this changes its essential nature as a fantastic magical world completely removed from the real one.

Alexandra Quick, like Harry Potter, has "grown up" a bit with each book, but it's always been a bit darker and more serious. This trend will continue in AQATWA — inasmuch as you can suspend your disbelief enough to accept a wizarding world in the first place, AQ is what I fancy a wizarding world might actually look like, though I admit I still take some farcical liberties for humor value.

But AQ is definitely not-canon compliant anymore.

Anyway, besides revising my manuscript, I have also been commissioning some artwork like I did for the last book.

Here's a sneak peak at one piece.

Warning: Slightly spoilery, so don't look if you don't want to know anything about characters who will appear in AQATWA.

( Guess who's back, back again... )

I just finished rereading all four books in the Alexandra Quick series. Whew!

I should have done it before now, but as I've mentioned before, I am not much of a rereader. I very rarely reread even my favorite books, because there are just too many books waiting for me to get around to them in the first place. But for an author continuing a series, it's obviously necessary to do a reread now and then, and since I finished the last book over five years ago, it was very much overdue.

I've seen people who say they reread an entire series every time a new book comes out, even massive ones like Game of Thrones or Brandon Sanderson's Words of Radiance. Like, wow. I don't consider myself a slow reader, but obviously some of y'all read a lot faster than I do.

On the one hand, I was pleased that I remembered almost all of the plot points and characters and seeds I have planted and even the major scenes and dialogs. I do have a pretty good memory for books, so it's not like I had no idea where I was going or what I had in mind or what Alexandra's story had been. I just needed to refresh my memory on some of the details.

But there were some details that had slipped my mind. One in particular will require a significant rewrite of a few chapters of AQATWA because I forgot something that was mentioned in passing in an earlier book. I found a few other places in the current draft where I contradicted some things that were said in earlier books, and found a few story elements that I obviously intended to do something with and... forgot about. So I'm trying to tie those back into the plot.

I am about a quarter of the way through my first rewrite, but I haven't gotten to the hard parts yet.

Given my record over the past few years, I am naturally wary of giving even an implied timeline. But with an actual completed first draft, I am a little more confident that I'm not overpromising, barring unforeseen circumstances. So, I am hoping to finish my first pass in the next month or two. That would put it in the hands of my beta-readers in a couple of months, which means — tentatively — AQATWA will begin posting in the spring or early summer.

That's the current plan. Things might change, but you really should see it this year unless I get hit by a bus.

As a reward for your patience, I may give you a New Year's sneak peak.

And book six is slowly taking shape in my head...

... you finally get around to rereading your series and discover a one-liner in a previous book that you'd forgotten about that means you're going to have rewrite several chapters of your current manuscript.

I am making progress. About a quarter of the way through my first editing pass. I'm going to be slowed down when I get to the sections I know will need major revision.

I am starting to think about artwork, too. As you know, I created illustrations for each chapter in my previous books, using Poser and Photoshop. Looking back at these, while some were rather charming, it's a bit embarrassing how bad my graphic arts skills are. I think I have neither time nor inclination to do that again, so I'll probably commission a few illustrations instead.

I just typed the words "The End."

It's been a long time.

Book four, Alexandra Quick and Stars Above, was completed in 2011, and posted at the end of that year. I began work on book five, Alexadra Quick and the World Away, early in 2012.

Things got in the way. Some of it was life. Some of it was, I guess, what you could call "writer's block," but which I'd call just an ever-growing, ever-heavier set of excuses which eventually resulted in months, and then years going by in which I wrote little or nothing.

Always, always, it was in the back of my mind. Whatever I did, especially when I had a free evening or weekend, I'd think "Why don't you sit down and write?"

I was ready to give up more than once. I even told you that I might never finish this.

For whatever reason, something happened this year. The spark reignited. I could write again. The closer to the end I got, the more motivated I was to finish.

And now the first draft is done.

Right now, it's 56 chapters, and 281,900 words. That makes it by far the largest volume so far.

This is a very, very rough draft. I've been working on this thing for over six years now. Never mind forgetting my previous books, I've forgotten some of what I wrote in early chapters of this book! So it's going to need a lot of revision. I expect multiple chapters to be rewritten, moved, and deleted, and possibly entire subplots to disappear. There are plot holes to be paved over, characters who drop in and then never serve a purpose, and oh so much bad writing.

I am happy to say that my two regular beta-readers for my previous books reported they are still willing and available, so I don't have to go on a search for new betas. I am hoping to have a semi-readable revised manuscript ready to turn over to them early next year. Then there will be more rewriting... So, I do not have a target date yet, but I can finally say with reasonable confidence that Alexandra Quick and the World Away will be published in 2019.

Thanks for your patience. Thanks to everyone who never gave up hope. And for those of you who did give up hope, I don't blame you, but I hope you'll still be interested enough to read the next volume.

(Will there be a volume six? And seven? Well, I know the names and general course of the plot for both. Yes, I still really, truly want to finish the series someday. But book five took over six years. Lemme wrap this up before I start thinking about book six.)

And here's a word cloud, since I haven't done one in a while. (In fact, in the time since I last created one, web technology has changed so much that most of the tools I used to use to create them are no longer available...)

AQATWA word cloud

And so is this book.... slowly.

I promised a progress report soon, so here it is: I have been writing lately, and doing better than I have in months, though nowhere near my peak output of several years ago.

The manuscript stands at about 230K words, and 47 chapters. I estimate it's about 80-85% done. I've begun writing the final arc, the events leading up to the climax.

Knowing what a mistake it is to talk about deadlines, I'll say I've set myself the goal of actually finishing the first draft by the end of this year. That's not a promise, but I know it's doable if I buckle down just a little bit.

This book is really, really messy right now. After I finish the draft, it's going to take some major editing, hacking and slashing before I'd even think of letting a beta-reader look at it. There are probably entire chapters that need to go, and others that are terrible and need to be rewritten. Also, embarrassingly, I find so much time has passed that sometimes I can't remember my own continuity, which means I keep having to refer back to earlier volumes. (I really need to do a complete reread of my own series soon. I sometimes suspect JKR didn't do this before she finished Deathly Hallows...)

Maybe I'll put up another one of those word clouds when I get closer to the end.

Thanks everyone for your patience. I still get emails, PMs, and reviews, and I do read and appreciate all of them. I try to answer everyone, but please don't feel ignored if your message somehow slipped past me, or I left it in my inbox and forgot about it. It is nice to know that even with GRRM and Patrick Rothfuss levels of procrastination, there are still people willing to read the next book of this series that I started over 10 years ago.

Some folks have asked about progress on AQATWA. (Not surprising, I am always being asked about that.)

I have been writing. Not as much as I'd like (what else is new?), but slow progress is being made.

The chief obstacle is not actually time, but time management.

There are things I spend time on instead of writing, which I could cut down on or drastically curtail. There are also other factors that drain my time and energy, but I am not placing the blame on external forces. I firmly believe that with few exceptions, anything you say you want to do, if you really, really want to do it, you will. This applies to everything from getting out of debt to kicking an addiction to losing weight to climbing Mount Everest to.... well, finishing a book. If you really want to do it, and you are physically capable of doing it, then if you don't do it, it's because you actually have prioritized other things higher. Maybe with good reason! Maybe because what you want to do is really, really hard and when it comes down to it, you aren't motivated enough to make it happen. But the truth remains. It's not that you can't, but you don't.

As I said some time ago, I am no longer giving ETAs on completion. It will happen when it happens, which won't be as soon as I would like or as soon as you would like. But I am working on making it happen.

A few people have PMed me* to ask if I'm dead or have abandoned writing, etc.

I am not dead. I have not, exactly, abandoned writing.

The same situation I have alluded to earlier in a very non-specific manner has not changed. And unfortunately, isn't likely to change in the near future. And I just can't manage to get any real writing done until there is a resolution.

(No, I'm not unemployed or terminally ill, but I just don't want to discuss real life issues.)

Sorry to be so vague, and I'm sorry I've been disappointing you for years (!) now. I really have not lost interest in writing, or finishing AQ. But it's best if you just assume there is no prospect of seeing the next volume any time in the foreseeable future. I genuinely and sincerely do want and intend to finish it someday. I just can't tell you when.

I've been avoiding LJ or even writing new book reviews because I feel so bad about not giving any news of progress on AQ. I might try to start posting book reviews again (I suppose a few people actually like those), but every time I do, I can't help feeling like I'm just disappointing all the folks who wanted to see an AQ update.

I do think about AQ every day (seriously), and now and then, I manage to add a few paragraphs, but I don't want to lead you on and make another promise about finishing it by the end of this year or at any point in the future.

* Speaking of which -

agogobell, your LJ settings are on full privacy mode, which refuses all messages, so I can't reply to you.

A little. Not much, and it's literally been so long since I actually opened the document that it took me a while to remember where I was in the story. Yeah, I have been that blocked/distracted.

But I wrote a little bit, and I'm going to try to write some more. Small steps...

Looking at my archive of AQ images, I am inspired by how many talented people have drawn fan art for my stories. And despite the long hiatus in my writing, people are still creating new fan works for me.

rikchik came up with a currency symbol for Confederation Lions. It is much cooler than what I envisioned (which was basically just a stylized "L" with a hash mark or something).

Sajirah tumblr drew a picture of an older Alex.

And

agogobell wrote a short story: Anna Chu and the World Away.

So what about your writing?

A few people suggested I try writing something else, and I did take a stab at that. I began a new (original fiction) novel, but did not get very far. I still like the idea very much, and will pursue it later, but I just don't think I do very well working on multiple projects at once.

In the keep-your-fingers crossed department, after finding little interest with agents for my SF novel, I sent it off to the few publishers that still accept unagented manuscripts and forgot about it. And about six months later, one publisher - a fairly well known one - informed me that my manuscript had been selected from the slush pile for "further consideration."

Eight months on, and I am still waiting to hear from them. This publisher is rather notoriously slow about such things, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's a year or two from now before I finally get a rejection or acceptance. I am not going to get my hopes too high - I was told by someone familiar with said publisher's slush pile that I am already about one in a thousand by getting this far, but the odds of actually getting all the way to a thumbs up and a publishing contract are still probably at least ten to one. But it's cool.

I am mustering my energies, gathering my resolve, making New Year's resolutions, and all that stuff. I have a number of things I need to do in the coming year, not the least of which is getting back to writing. I'm not making any more promises or giving ETAs, but I have taken a long enough hiatus, I am missing the writing, and with a little work on time management and reassignment of priorities, I would like to get back to it.

I'll keep you posted. And thanks, as always, for your patience, and for those of you who haven't given up on seeing the AQ series completed.

Okay, here's the thing: I have not been writing lately.

There are reasons, but my non-writing life is not public, and anyway, it doesn't matter.

Finishing a fan fiction novel is not what most people might call a major life goal, but I really do want to write again, and moreover, I do feel an obligation to deliver what I promised. Of all the things that have been slipping by the wayside lately, AQ is the one that bothers me most.

I am - trying - to make some adjustments that will make writing happen again. I swear that AQATWA is not dead, that I will finish it. You all are amazingly patient, and I'm really not fishing for reassurances. But I just want you to know that while things aren't going well on the writing front right now, it's not because I have given up or lost interest.

In the meantime, people are still creating AQ fan art, which makes me both happy and guilty.

From KadinD at DeviantArt:

And another portrait by cactusfantastico: "Flagration."

Okay, I am up to 189K words now. So I'm averaging about 5000 words a month. Yes, I can do the math - I am not even going to finish this year at that rate. I'm working on it, which means, among other things, cutting back on some of my other time-sinks. Sometimes that is not easy.

The story is slowly moving towards the third and final act, though that act is going to be long, and multi-part, and there is a major segment that I am not yet sure will fit into this book or needs to be moved into the next.

Alexandra: Sometimes more Chaotic than Good

Alexandra will be doing some things in this book that some readers will not approve of. (Well, when does she not? But she's really crossing a few boundaries this time.) Partly it's because she's going to be pushed pretty hard, and partly it's because it turns out that she's not always iron-willed when it comes to resisting temptation. Also, she's got a bit of her father in her, which will be more obvious in this volume.

Which makes this new piece of fan art, sent to me by KadinD on DeviantArt, appropriate, as it's a rather fierce-looking Alexandra.

The way things are looking right now, you will be seeing a lot more of Alexandra's sisters, but significantly less of her friends. That's not to say Anna, David, and the Pritchards have no role in AQATWA, but this book will be kind of like Alexandra's adventures in Dinétah, only moreso - she spends much of it on her own.

I know many readers don't like it when her friends get sidelined, and they want to see more of the dynamic that characterized the Harry/Ron/Hermione relationship. I do have even more important roles for her friends (even poor David) in future books. But Alexandra was never Harry, parallels notwithstanding. Her friends are important, but often she goes her own way - even when she shouldn't.

The draft is currently kind of a mess, though, as I've said before, so there may be substantial changes after I finally get around to revising and then getting it beta-read.

(And I just clicked back through all my aqatwa entries and found my "New Year's Resolution" to finish the book... in January, 2014. And that these update posts sometimes repeat themselves. Now I am really bummed.)

I've gotten several PMs in the last couple of weeks asking "Hey, are you still around?" (And "Hey, are you still writing the next book in the Alexandra Quick series?")

Yes, and yes.

And yes, it's still going damned slowly.

I remember when I was reliably writing a book a year. And now it's going on three years. I don't blame the folks who have given up waiting. Hopefully they will return when I finally do bring out the next volume.

For what it's worth, I am back to making myself write a little bit each night - even if it's only a little. I just finished Chapter 36, and 184K words.

The Muse is not cooperative lately.

I'm not one of those people who actually believes in a "muse," even figuratively - writing is a matter of putting the time in with your butt in a chair (and it helps if you're not alt-tabbing to check the Internet or play solo Labyrinth: The War On Terror every few minutes).

Lately, though, I have been realizing that the creative "spark," or whatever you want to call it, is more sensitive than I thought to the environment and life circumstances. It's not something you can just conjure up on demand when it's time to write if your head is not there.

Nonetheless, I've been trying the last week or so to force my way through, especially given the paltry progress this year so far.

I finally finished another chapter. The current word count is 181K, and I'm on Chapter 35.

This manuscript is really a mess. I hope my betas will forgive me for inflicting this on them. I will do my best to fix it first after I finish the rough draft, but right now, just getting words down seems the only way forward.

I finally opened up the manuscript and added a bit to it tonight. Not much, but more than I've managed for the past couple of weeks.

It's not been a good winter, and I know, I am totally turning into George R. R. Martin except without the money or the fame. But AQATWA is just crawling, not dead or dying.

I'm sorry. This week has sucked. The next few probably won't be any better.

Only managed to write for a couple of hours this week, and that was mostly trying to work my way through the same plot complication I've been struggling with for the last two weeks. The scheme is full of plot holes and I haven't worked them out because I've been just trying to write through it with an idea of where I'm going but not how I will get there. That's not going to work for this particular twist - it needs to be worked out in a tightly planned fashion. Which means outlining. Hopefully will get around to that this week. Right now the idea in my head is kind of like "And then Alexandra does this, and then that happens, and then - WAVES HANDS/DEUX EX MACHINA/MAYBE THE READERS WON'T NOTICE - and everything goes as planned and she's in the next scene..."

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Inverarity is not a Scottish village

Books, movies, and fan fiction

Entries tagged with writing

AQATWA: Cover Reveal

AQATWA: End Year Five

Word Counts

AQATWA: Poser

AQATWA: The Hard Part, and how to describe what's in your head

AQATWA, reddit, and canon-compliance

AQATWA Progress

r/AlexandraQuick

Rowling's American Wizarding World

AQ reread and AQATWA progress

TFW...

AQATWA - I beat GRRM

AQATWA: Winter is Coming

On Writing

Where I'm at

AQATWA: So I wrote

AQATWA: I have no words, but I do have drawings

So what about your writing?

AQATWA: That is not dead which is yet unwritten

AQATWA: I used to write a novel in six months...

Alexandra: Sometimes more Chaotic than Good

AQATWA: People are worried

AQATWA: Raging against the dying of the light

AQATWA: Tap tap tap

AQATWA: Life steps on intentions

AQATWA: When the seat of one's pants crashes into an outline