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Current Project Progress

Pilfer! (early-mid 2024)

Drafting: Complete!

First-Pass Revisions: Complete!

Second Draft: Complete!

Second-Pass Revisions: Complete!

Final Draft Candidate: Complete!

5/5/2024

Second-Pass revisions are humming along. The ice sculpture looks like a swan, now it's a matter of adding definition.

Maybe not a swan. Probably closer to a warthog. And it's not made out of ice, but some kind of cheese. The definition thing still stands, though.

5/1/2024

If there was ever a time to break out a dad-joke about it "being drafty in here", now would be the time to...

Oh. Welp. There it is.

Thanks to a birthday present of time to write, the second draft of Pilfer is complete! I know I've said this before, but I think this phase will go by quickly. Mostly, it's B-plots getting neatened up, then a good old fashioned line edit, and it'll be good to go!

I told a friend I'd been hoping to finish this up by the end of February. I know it's May, but I'm genuinely happy with what's been done with that time. Lord willing and writer's block being kind, I don't think this revision slog happens next book.

4/7/2024

I feel comfortable writing 80% there, because that's technically the amount done for where I'm at. The struggle is coming from the amount that has to come together in order for it to make sense and be polished. I'll be honest, I get a little daunted at this point in writing. I see all the threads from the first draft coming together to make a tapestry, but then I see where I didn't match the patterns correctly or where there's a bunch of other small adjustments to be made and I get overwhelmed and write run-on sentences in other media as a rebellion against the rigor I hold myself to and I'm doing it right now aren't I?

I feel like I'm letting someone, somewhere down by not finishing sooner. I feel guilty when I'm not writing, because I'm not "productive". I feel like a schmuck because I had grand ideas for three books a year (somehow, while working full-time and not ignoring my family) and those ideals aren't being met. I feel like a failure who is not only a failure but in the process of failing in a whole new way.

Internal Aaron's dialogue isn't kind right now. Say a prayer for me that I might be able to finish this thing well.

3/10/2024

Second draft continues apace, past the 40% mark now. There's been a few out-and-out rewrites, which take time to button up when you're not writing full-time. The end product is stuff I'm really, really happy with, so it's been well worth it. There's also a few stylistic changes I had to make (tense change during certain scenes/flashbacks, when and where they show up, how it ties back in, etc.) that have eaten up time.

I mean, no, I don't actually have a time limit outside of the timepiece of Providence, really, but I also want to move this along. I'd like to have four books under my belt before 2025.

2/14/2024

Apparently, when I schedule out second drafts, I need to add the Scotty factor to cover the "this is all garbage and needs to be completely rewritten" plaguing the early chapters of a draft. I think I'm almost out of that initial slog (although, I do know at least one later chapter is going to be completely rewritten from the group up). Beta reading has most definitely been pushed back to the beginning of March at the absolute earliest, though.

Splinters (early 2024)

Drafting: Complete!

Trunked: 100%

1/16/2024

As the immortal Sandi Patty once said, another time and another place.

I think there's a good story in Splinters, a story and a world that I love dearly. It was quite literally therapeutic to write. But the writer I need to be to make this into what it deserves doesn't exist quite yet.

So into the trunk you go, sweet Splinters. I love you.

Halfway

Published on February 26, 2023

Hi, all. Sorry about the dust, but I promise it’s for a good cause.

After two years of discovery writing, worldbuilding, and then doing almost zero writing for the past three years, this author is emerging from his chrysalis. Today marked the passing the 50,000 word milestone, putting me at roughly halfway done. My goal is 105,000, a thousand words more than Brian Jacques’ first Redwall novel, which I find has enough pages to be substantial, but short enough to not feel like a chore to read through. The clip is coming along much faster than I thought it would, and as soon the first outline was finished, it’s just started pouring out of me. I’d originally set a date to finish the first draft before Baldur’s Gate 3 came out sometime in August, but after hitting 30,000 words a few months ahead of time, I decide to push it forward to June 19th. It’d make a nice birthday present for Jenn, I thought.

Well, really, she thought. She’s been ridiculously supportive throughout the entire process, constantly poking and prodding me for new chapters over the past few years.

However, now I’ve hit 50,000 words, which was originally scheduled to have a deadline of April 25th. I’m honestly not trying to brag, I’m just genuinely surprised at how much I’ve been able to get done in such a short amount of time. This book has had enough of being stuck in the tap and it’s manifested itself as a fire hose, filling up the above-ground pool of my outline with frightening speed.

Lord willing, I’m hoping to have the first draft of the manuscript finished by the end of May, edit it into a second draft over the course of a couple more months, then start the search for an agent to work on getting it published.

Then there’s the matter of a sequel, and if you do a sequel you have to have a trilogy, right?

Right?

Anyhoo, thank you for peeking in on me, I’m doing well, I promise! I’ll try to get some new posts in over the course of the next couple months, but I’d hate to promise that they’d be regular and then leave a thick coat of dust on my WordPress account.

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