I'm Back!

If I'm honest, I've never been away! What I have been doing is writing. And reading. Lots and lots of writing and lots and lots of reading.

I've been reading books that I can't put down, much to my husband's annoyance, and reading books about writing.

I've been writing draft 3.440,004 of my upper middle grade science fiction. I did try writing a middle grade fantasy but my science fiction always calls me back. I don't think I can be finished with it until the whole thing is written and submitted.

I've been working really hard on my sci fi. I'm working on connecting the reader to my characters. I've done a lot of work on tragic characters as that is something which apparently captures the reader. I love reading my book so I don't think I'm a good judge haha!

I'm also baring in mind the words of my amazing beta reader, @MarieKorman, who said she really liked the part of the story where they go through the threshold. That is something I'm really working on and I'm going to do a blog post all about how I'm tackling that, using experience from my day job to help me. And, of course, Lisa Cron's book, Story Genius.

There's something about this particular story that I can't put down. I'm usually quite good at thinking, This story isn't working, time to try something else. I've done that with a number of projects I've thought about starting in the mean time. But there is something, something special about this story that needs to be written.

Next blog post will be about how I'm plotting act 2 of my story. I've got act 1 down, pending editing, and act 3 sort of wrote itself, also pending an edit. But making act 2 character driven rather than a series of things that happen has been a challenge.  Don't worry, though, I'll get there!