This week I’ve begun to write the third novel in the Donaghue and Stainer Crime Novel series, The Fregoli Delusion.
For those of you keeping score at home, Blood Passage is the first novel in the series, published this summer by The Plaid Raccoon Press. The second novel, Marcie’s Murder, is in pageproofs. After I hear back from one more reader it will receive a last revision and a final proofreading before going to press. Fregoli, the third in the series, will hopefully be finished in draft form by April, when Marcie’s Murder is published. After passing through my team of readers and going through the usual revision and proofreading process, it will hopefully go to press in Fall 2012. That’s the plan. The upcoming year will be a very busy one, I hope.
I don’t normally talk about what I’m writing until after it’s done. This time, however, I’m going to try an experiment of sorts. I have now moved my blogging from the morning, which is when I write best, to the evenings, when I write the worst. Hold on, though, that’s not the experiment I meant. Some writers, such as David Hewson for example, blog while they’re writing their next book, and David also tweets while writing, often telling us how many words he produced that day. I plan to post a few of my experiences here on The Overnight Bestseller while writing Fregoli in the hopes that you may find it interesting to follow the ups and downs of the novel-writing process as I happen to live it over the next few months.
I’m nervous making this kind of commitment because it’s something of a risk. I could conceivably crash and burn, the story could abandon me, I could jinx myself and develop a severe case of writer’s block. Who knows?
Might be interesting to stay tuned, though, to see how it goes. Don’t you think?
UPDATE #1: This week gets it off to a good start. Today I finished the fourth chapter and my word count currently stands at just over 10 k. That's all right, I suppose, given that I hope to finish in the mid-90s. I'm not going to worry about the word count, however. I intend to follow my outline, tell this story as I want to tell it, and deal with the length of the MS afterwards.
Michael, I think it's a great idea for you to document your ups and downs whilst you write your next novel. If nothing else it will be a lot of fun. I've been doing just that with my novel. Not so much documenting the steps as just throwing out ideas and discussion topics. Be careful though, I am finding the social media to be a bit of a distraction. But then again, you sound like you are much more focused than I am! Good luck!
ReplyDeleteExcited to see your progress. It's hard to be accountable but worth it in the end. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteHey Lan, I hope things are going well for you. You're right, social media can be a definite distraction, which is why I've moved it to the evenings, after I've finished working on the book for the day. We'll see how it goes.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the good wishes, Sarah! I notice on your blog (http://www.sarahbelliston.com/)you just pared 10,000 words from your current MS. Good for you! Isn't revision fun?
Stayed tuned, we're just getting started! m