So work on Novel 5 (currently titled “Marshal Morcos”, but that’s almost certainly going to change at some point) is a weird little thing.
Basically, this is the skeleton of something I wrote in a NaNoWriMo (“National Novel Writing Month”) back in 2013. It’s been sitting around on my laptop for 6 years waiting for me to have a chance to reread/edit it.
Which is what I’m doing. And man, has my writing changed a LOT in the last six years.
I mean, it’s not completely fair. NaNoWriMo is about hitting word targets, not about producing quality work. And I hit the word target (the final word count before I started the editing process was 50,001), but the new version doesn’t exactly resemble the original.
For example, the opening scene is this weird quasi-dinner-party-political-thriller sorta thing that initially was very dry. The new version, humbly, is a lot more like the dinner scene from Dune… political machinations within machinations, shifting allegiances and subtle jabs between both allies and enemies. It’s not great yet, but the beginnings of something great is there. Hopefully over the next two revisions I can find the great first chapter in there somewhere… or maybe cut it completely. That tends to be the fate of most of my first draft early chapters. But we’ll see!
Anyway, it’s neat working with such old material of my own. And kinda fun… I like the optimism that I had 6 years ago!
Other than that, the beta readers are continuing to do amazing things with Novel 4, and no word from “my” agent regarding Novel 3 yet. It’s been about 7 months… this is usually when they send me their thoughts. But we will see, we will see…
Last note, just over a month before I go to Tokyo! Excited!