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| IWSG |
After spending roughly 1 1/2 years wandering around on another blogging platform, I have come back to where it all started.
Without further ado, here is my ye olden witty intro to the monthly IWSG blog hop.
The first Wednesday of the month is set aside for insecure writers across the blog-o-sphere to share all of our individual experiences, the gud, the baaaaaad and the plug ugly.
If my name sounds familiar to some of you, then three cheers and a Tigger for you. I have previously participated in the IWSG blog hop under my previous Blogger blog, Father Nature's Corner. For those of you who do remember me and are curious on what I've been doing for the past couple of years, please check out the 1st two posts of this blog for the all the salacious details.
With the intro out of the way, I shall now enlighten everyone on a minor {or major, depending on how you want to look at it} insecurity/worry of mine: writing a trilogy.
For the past several years, I've always written stand-alone stories. They were relatively easy to do, as all the characters were self-contained and whatever back story you wanted to introduce was usually a one off. And because I'm a dyed-in-the-wool panster when it comes to writing, writing stand-alones worked perfectly for me.
But then came that fateful day back in late 2016 when I decided to re-write a previously vanity published book. Excruciatingly long story made painfully short, I'm now one-third of the way through the final book of the trilogy, and let me tell you, it's not been an easy journey.
Developing characters, bringing some characters immediately forward to the next book, having some characters lay dormant for the next book but come roaring back with a vengeance for the final book, and above all, keeping track of all of them as well as the various plot lines. It's enough to make me lose my mind.
Even though for the final book I decided to break my cardinal rule by writing a four page manifesto/outline that was intended to map out exactly what I need to accomplish in this final book, I'm still thinking I'm missing something important. Something that is a key component to the completion of the trilogy. Something that when it does pop up, will make me pull my hair out with a pair of zircon encrusted tweezers (I'm pretty much bald, btw), especially since I wrote another one page outline for when I start writing the book again sometime later this year.
I've already found one major error while going through a final round of edits for book #2. The kind of error that left uncorrected, would throw the story into chaos.
I tell ya, it ain't easy writing a series of any length, and I give major props to those people who can do it and do it well.
I thank everyone for stopping by to read my IWSG and I look forward to interacting with everyone in the near future.
{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved
Hopefully you find that one key element.
ReplyDeleteGB! Good to have you back. I'd see your comment now and then on my blog, but now I've finally found your new blog. Awesome.
Alex, thanks for stopping by to say "hi". It's good to be back on familiar ground again.
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping so too. I certainly would hate to get more than 3/4 of the way through only to find out that something very germane to the story got left out.
Hi G.B.
ReplyDeleteI hope your sanity is intact after trying to keep track of all these characters, both dormant and developing ones as well as the roaring ones! Hope they are toeing the line. Sounds like a mammoth task.
February Co-host
Michelle, thanks for stopping by.
DeleteIt most definitely is. One of the tricky parts is finding the right spot to reintroduce a key character back into the story. Too soon and it comes off force, too late and it doesn't do the story proper justice.
Keeping track with characters is always a hassle. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeletewww.ficklemillennial.blogspot.com
Thank you for stopping by. It is, whether they're key components or semi-throwaways.
DeleteBest of luck on your revision! I know those can be a pest.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by.
DeleteNot so much the revision as simply trying to make sure that I have all the bases covered when I complete the novel.
"I tell ya, it ain't easy writing a series of any length, and I give major props to those people who can do it and do it well." I hear you. Just when I thought it was almost over, I realised I had to do a major rewrite on the over-arching storyline... It's enough to make everyone cry :-) Good luck with your rewrites!
ReplyDeleteRonel visiting for Feb's IWSG Day Being an Insecure Writer -- And Happy About It
Thanks for stopping by and thanks for the good wishes.
DeleteOne of my small fears right now is me accidentally inserting a major swerve in the final volume and messing everything up. Now mind you, I have thought about doing this with great frequency and keep smacking myself into smartness every time I do think of it. It's an ongoing battle that I'm determined to win.