An Update both Exciting and Frustrating

Hello everyone!

I am going to ramble a bit here, but bear with me. 

As you may have well noticed, there were no chapters this week. I didn’t post an explanation sooner because I was still uncertain regarding a few things and didn’t want to give inaccurate information. This last week and a bit I got stuck in the weeds, as it were, and as I was reviewing my notes and plans for the remainder of Perseverance I came to a conclusion: I done goofed.  

This is where my inexperience as an author (What Will Be is my first project that ever got beyond a handful of chapters and vague outlines) caught up with me and forced me to take stock of the situation. 

Without getting too spoiler-y, at the current pace I was writing, my original outline for book 1 would have - at a conservative guess - tripled the current word count resulting in an absolute beast of a book. That in itself isn’t the worst thing in the world, but the more I reviewed things, the more I realized that from a pacing standpoint it would make more sense to split things up more.

This next part treads into minor spoiler territory but I feel I have also been quite overt in choreographing it. 

Will is eventually going to be leaving Elbura and he will be exposed to the politics of the Crown, the Slayers, and possibly even a few other as-of-yet unnamed factions which will culminate in some #coolshit as some broader plot elements and larger issues come to light. From a pacing perspective, what I was basically gearing up to do was introducing many new characters, dynamics, locations, etc. right in the middle of an already large book. 

Better, I think, to have that kind of stuff happen within the context of the premise for a second book as an extension of stuff that happened in the first book. The ‘middle’ of books can already - quite infamously - start to drag on a little bit. Shoehorning the start of a book into the middle of a book just… yeah, it’d be messy, I think. 

So why the delays? 

Sure, I could have bulldozed ahead but the chapter(s) would almost certainly have been filler. Fun filler, perhaps, but filler all the same as I wrote to buy myself time. That wouldn’t be giving myself, my readers, or the story the respect they deserve. 

What I need to do is consider how the pacing of the story so far might be better adjusted to transition into a satisfying conclusion to the first book and leave a few intentionally dangling threads to transition into a second book. It… well, it sucks. Taking a look at something you’ve worked really hard on and realizing that it’s not going to work or not working is tough. 

It is the first week of a new school term and I’ve been so preoccupied with thoughts of What Will Be that it’s impacting my work. 

To put a lighter spin on things, though, in many ways, I am functionally transitioning into the first editing phase of the first book of What Will Be to rework what was meant to be a portion of the middle into the ending. To make that ending land, it’ll also then require noting earlier scenes in which stuff could be more/less emphasized and yada yada I have a lot of work to do BUT it’ll result in a finished Book 1 which is exciting as fuck.   

For my Patrons, I will be pausing the next payment. I also owe you a few chapters and when they are written I will post them. So no need to cancel - you will not be charged anything - because it means you will still get some posts, updates, etc. from me as I work through this process. 

For folks on Royal Road, sit tight. I want the story you get to be something I don’t feel is rushed. When it is all good to go, I will post stuff while I start the hunt for a publisher and eventually do the whole stub thing BUT my followers and whatnot should still get a chance to read a version of the story before it moves to KU or somewhere else. 

I will be around. What Will Be is not going anywhere. It just needs a bit of a tune up. 

Have an amazing weekend everyone. 

Thank you all for your continued support,

-Googieman