I kept getting sidetracked, but the first 10 chapters of Star and Scribe did get revised. My sincere thanks to people who actually read the first drafts (which were chock full of continuity errors, typos, and just plain lousy bits). My abject apologies for asking you to read it again so I can feel a little less embarrassed about how crappy the first take was. It’s a good exercise to just sit down and crank stuff out, because you really do build momentum. It all ground to a halt when I realized I needed to to open it up a bit more. I needed more details, better characters, fewer mistakes. The revision was necessary but it also killed the pace of my writing. I wonder now if it would have been better to just barf up the entire first draft in one go and then go back and begin the long, painful process of editing when I had a 100% clear idea of what the story was. I can promise that I have a better idea now, and that the person-who-shall-remain-nameless that complained that Star and Scribe isn’t actually a Sci-Fi story will not be disappointed.

To test the alternative theory of “just get it up there,” I’ll be biting off more than I can chew by attempting to write an entire novel during the month of November. I know some others who will be participating in NaNoWriMo. Anybody want to be my writing buddy? I’ll be working on a fractured fairy tale that (for now) I’m calling The Grim Sister. This story has been percolating in my head for several years, and I think it’s about time for it to come out. We’ll see if this one flows as easily as I hope it will, or if it will prove as stubborn as Star and Scribe has.

Writing is difficult, but worth it. And if I ever want to get good at it, I suspect I’ll have to write a lot of rough before I get any diamonds.