Better is a Process

Hello everyone. I’ve been pretty busy lately writing (as always) and doing online classes (only nine more left before I finish this degree!) Still, I wanted to pop in with a few updates. Though I’ve kept my writing output high, I’ve primarily focused on editing this month. 

Part of this is for my work on my Tenebroum book 5 edit, which I’ve just finished, and my Letter of the Law book 1 rewrite, which remains ongoing. I’ve also been working a lot on short stories, with a focus on improving old shorts rather than writing new ones in an effort to tighten up my prose. 

I don’t post my short stories here, but I regularly post them on Discord for feedback if you want to look. For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to up my verb game and reduce the amount of passive voice in my writing.

For example, the other morning, I took a hatchet to an older story I wrote early last year. When I went through it, I eliminated 80 instances of was/were in a 5,000-word story, which shows the growth I’ve achieved in the last few months of diligently focusing on this stuff. 

I had a recent comment on Royalroad that really says it all. 

Writing so much is really starting to show some results. So, for anyone waiting for me to rewrite the early parts of Death After Death or any of my other books, give me some time and I will get there. Eventually, I’ll make that prose shine, too. I actually plan to cut back my output next year to prioritize editing my backlog. That won't decrease my current post frequency, though it will likely delay the launch of anything new for a while as I focus on finishing things instead of starting them.

My particular focus lately is on trying to finish the circled books. Once they are done, I will have a lot more time to polish instead of draft.

(Note: Those wordcount targets are estimates. Death After Death especially seems to be a bit of a moving target for where the story finally ends. Brewing Bad seems well set to end as a trilogy, but Bloodstained Blade hasn't yet decided if it wants to keep going into a fourth book or not. While I always start my books with an ending in mind, sometimes I choose a better ending a bit further away instead.)