Monday, January 11, 2016

Full Throttle and then into the pits

Photo used unmodified. Created by Zoe .  licensed under
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
It's a new year and I've been remiss when it comes to blog updates.  What have I been up to?  I've been doing some writing, of course.  I started working on a blog post some time ago to report on progress made during the extended writing session I did in December.  Somehow, I seem to have misplaced that post.  I can assure you that the lost post was a legendary piece of prose, and we should all lament its passing.  But we must carry on somehow, despite the sorrow...

Let me put the melodrama aside and tell you what I actually did.  I wrote a lot of words and I managed to get through most of a very, very challenging part of the manuscript.  The manuscript is close to 90k words now and I think the end is in sight, although there are still a couple of potentially daunting sequences remaining.  The end of this series is taxing me as a writer and a thinker, and I believe those are both good things.  It would have been a disservice to readers and to me (on a personal level) to play it safe on this finale.  The entire series is thematically predicated on the concept of bold risks and danger.  It only seems fitting that the end of the series should retain a high level of ambition.

I will confess to taking another writing break since the holidays began last month.  But it's getting to be about time for me to come out of this hiatus and get this book completed.  I think I am going to need a some dedicated writing days to pull this off--and those are typically in short supply.  But I will do my best to make that happen as soon as possible.  I am ready to cross this finish line and move into post production!

I wish you a very happy New Year, and I hope you will be reading Hemlock and the Maker's Fire well before the end of it!

This post is dedicated to the memory of David Bowie.  He's one of those artists that made a significant impression on me despite the fact I never considered myself a true fan of his.  It's a sad reality that sometimes the significance of a person is most easily appreciated in retrospect.