Back to Writing at Last

Peter Claesz – Public Domain – Metropolitan Museum – tap for large original

I’ve finally begun writing the next book. Working title: The Plainsrunner. I’ve finished the first chapter and chapter two is underway today. It feels good to be back writing after a couple of months of taking care of other chores. I had to publish The Francesians and record the audiobook. Then I had to take some time off. Meanwhile, the story was steeping in my brain and that seems to have made it practically ready-to-write.

I don’t know what picture to put with this post. I don’t have a cover, or even much in the way of cover ideas, so I can’t use that. I can’t think of anything in the story that could be represented by photos or other pictures available to me. I can’t just take the cover image I’ve been using for the Green Comet trilogy and give it a different color, as I did for those three books. The trilogy is over and this is a different story. Maybe I’ll just throw something up there and think about engaging an artist to create a cover for this book.

So, what to throw up there …

Anyway, I’ve decided to try to write a shorter book this time. The last three were all well over 100,000 words — Green Comet was 134,000 — and I’d like to offer readers something a little less daunting in this one. I’ve set myself a tentative limit of 80,000 words. Still fairly substantial, but a lot smaller than I’m used to. We’ll see how I do within these new constraints. I’ve also set myself a new daily goal for words written. The last one was a little higher than the previous two, and this one is higher again. We’ll see how it affects the quality of my output. I’m accustomed to doing a lot of editing before I do any writing, so with more writing each day I might end up having to do more editing afterwards. If it works out, I might be able to raise it again for the next book.

The Sun is shining here today after a long spell of wet, cloudy weather. I put out the birdfeeder yesterday and the chikadees are enjoying it today. And my fountain pens are smiling at me again, after being lonely for so long.

rjb