Happy Monday! This is pretty much the summer of vacations for me. I went on one at the end of June, came home for a week, and then left for the next. The end result is, my house is desperately in need of cleaning and I am so not motivated to do it. However, I've been really productive in the book department, so I'm happy about that!
What I’m working on: Now that Creators is finished and published, it's time for me to turn to Contributor. I entered it in ABNA this year, so I'd already done several rounds of edits, but I'm going to put it on my Kindle and do another round of edits. I've found that doing this is a really effective way at catching small errors (i.e. using "or" when I meant to use "of"), and it also lets me see how the book will look once it's finished. I'll also give that one a spin through SmartEdit as that program was extremely helpful when I was doing the edits on Creators.
What I hope to achieve: This week, I'm scaling back my expectations because I did just publish another book. The problem I find with writing is that I feel a sort of compulsion to work constantly. If I'm not writing, I'm feeling guilty about not writing. However, as with any job, it's also important to have some down time and to do other things like reading or exercising or cleaning my house. If I don't take the time to relax, I start feeling really frazzled and stressed out and that really does nothing to improve my writing. So, for this week, I'll maybe read a few chapters of Contributor.
What are my challenges: House cleaning. Seriously. It takes up so much time it's unreal. Also, as I mentioned, I need to give myself permissions to just relax once in a while.
What freaks me out: I'm not sure if it's because The Eye of the Beholder has already been out there for a while, but I'm not quite as terrified of bad reviews this time around. Granted, I know it'll be tough to get bad reviews, but I think publishing that first book was the point where I really stepped off the cliff.
My one big worry about writing a trilogy is maintaining consistency. I never thought about how HUGE writing a series is until I start writing one. Now I worry a lot about readers contacting me saying, "In book 1, character A says this but, in book 3, they do something that totally contradicts it." I once read there was an editor whose sole function was to read all of J.K. Rowling's books to make sure the spells were consistent throughout the series. It seemed kind of strange to me at the time, but now I totally get it.
What’s making me happy today: Having another book published, of course! And the fact that I've already had my first sale. I'm also very pleased that The Eye of the Beholder continues to sell a few more copies each month. Progress is good!
Teaser for Tuesday: Tomorrow I'll offer a first peek at Contributor. Though Creators is part of the universe, it's a standalone story, so Contributor will offer the first look into the meat of the trilogy.
