If you’ve been reading some of my more recent posts, you’ll know I’ve been shifting information from later books in my War of Six Crowns series to the second book. Not info dumping, mind you. Just… enough to make things more interesting all round.
But.
Okay before I get into that, I should explain to the readers who recently joined. Once upon a time I wrote a book called Doorways. While querying and submitting Doorways, I contemplated (and possibly should have followed through on) self publishing it. As a result, I wrote the sequel while Doorways was out being queried, since I saw value in having the sequel ready to edit after publishing the first book.
However, the publisher I sold Doorways to insisted I split the book in two, effectively turning a four book series into a five book one. Doorways became The Vanished Knight and The Heir’s Choice.
But. (And now we’re all on the same frequency)
Splitting Doorways means adding information and changing focus and all sorts of things to its two halves in order to make them books that could stand alone.
Which has put a bit of a wrinkle in my plan. I like TVK and THC like they are now. And honestly, I think they’re much stronger books than Doorways was. What I didn’t expect was that I’d go to the sequel to THC with the view to rewriting it, and discovering that I’d have to draft it again from scratch.
Again… let me explain. I always write two drafts to a story. The rough draft, where I form the foundation of what the story again, and the rewrite, where I take what I’d learned in the draft, form a plan, and write the story around the plan a second time. (Main reason being that all my roughs are hand written. So I always have to rewrite in order to get the story onto the computer in order to edit.)
What all this means is that basically, nothing that I’d written in the sequel (let’s call it Wo6C3 because it has no name yet) can be used in the rewrite, because none of the major things originating in TVK and THC are being addressed. Which means I’ve had to put three months of rough drafting into my publishing plan for Wo6C3 when I thought the rough draft was done.
Which, if you know what my plan for the next five years looks like… is just annoying. Oh well… a writer has to do what a writer has to do. And sometimes, I just can’t plan for these things.
So… at this moment, drafting Wo6C3 will be my priority for Camp NaNo. (All while editing THC.)
Anyone else find that editing one story makes the sequel you wrote obsolete?
The Five Year Project 