What are you working on right now?

[BKessler]

I missed November, but I'm currently on pace for a NaNoWriMo for December at 5000 words today. Mechanical ecology with larger prey and predator animals and a group out to hunt them. Have a solid opening scene but have a lot in the way of world building to do.

 

[Bren G]

I just ordered my proof copies today for my debut novel and can't wait to read it in 'real-life.'. At 125k words, it's not optimized for profit but it's the book I wanted to write so the heck with it. I am waffling between bouts of elation and terror. Is it ready? The feeling that I can improve it with more time has lessened significantly over the many, many, many rewrites and edits, reads and listens, but can't one always do more, do better? When is it time to put it to bed? To kick the fledgling from its nest? I've concluded think the time is now as the next book is starting to creep into my head more and more, and I also believe I'll develop more as an author using fresh pages. Gasp..! I hope I am right!

Any advice?

 

[Droflet]

Hey, Bren, I went through the same terrors as you, with my first book. So that's normal. Fortunately I found a great editor who was invaluable to the final form of the book. Have you had your book seen by a professional?

 

[Bren G]

Hey, Bren, I went through the same terrors as you, with my first book. So that's normal. Fortunately I found a great editor who was invaluable to the final form of the book. Have you had your book seen by a professional?

Thanks @Droflet. That’s comforting. Yes I have on the pro editor front. She was amazing too. I had it professionally proofed as well and did a second pass. It’s now typeset and have recruited some friends and family to do a last sweep for errors.

Ps - where can I find your book?

 

[Droflet]

You're welcome, Bren. Good going. My first book is on amazon. Uncommon Purpose by PJ Strebor. Unfortunately there are no books available.

 

[Charlie Payne]

I'm working on a story set in the Lovecraft/Arthurian world. It's for an anthology called Shadows Over Avalon. The Horror Tree, an online publisher is taking submissions for it and it's due at the end of the month...that's scary.

 

[Droflet]

Hey, Charlie. If it was easy everyone would do it. Good luck with it.

 

[Hyba]

Currently I'm working on the first two books in my high fantasy series! The first features civil unrest and an epidemic (so when 2020 came around I was like ), as well as a coup d'etat and generally shady peeps working behind the scenes. But I'm mostly focused on my second book at the moment, which features a very politically-driven plot in which two populations in decades-long conflict try to find peace, and there, too, there is general Shadiness.

Lately it's been more about connecting the dots. I write completely out of order so I have all of these scenes in this nebulous arrangement and I need to actually link them together. So that's what I've been doing, and of course that means writing new scenes and developing some characters' plot arcs and generally doing my best not to get lost. I have a lot of characters.

As it stands, the series will have around 6 or 7 books, but the first two are interchangeable in the sense that while they are ordered chronologically, you wouldn't miss much by choosing to read Book 2 before Book 1. I think

 

[alexvss]

I'm currently working on three different short-stories. Actually, I don't yet know if they're going to be short-stories or novelettes, for I'm still on the outlining process. It's a dark fantasy in a medieval setting; a lovecraftian horror; and a humurous sci-fi.

I didn't yet begin to write them because I'm working on my final project and studying for the finals in Law School.

 

[AlexH]

The main story I'm working on (and distracting myself from now) is for entering Writers of the Future this quarter (due end of December). I can say it's speculative fiction/wonder, but otherwise I'm not sure what the genre is. It has a fantasy element but ends almost with a sci-fi aspect. This 'confusion' could be it's undoing, but who knows. My best Writers of the Future result (Silver Honorable Mention) came last quarter, and that was an off-world but not sci-fi story with a similar-ish speculative element to my current work in progress. Which is already overdue to send out for critique. I better get on with it!

 

[HollyLisle]

I'm digging through old accounts after discovering some bugs in my password saver... and rediscovered this place. Nice to know you're still here.

 

[Thiswriterinme]

Oh man, what am I not working on?

Currently, I am editing a 173k word novel and finishing up the first draft of the first novel in a 7 book series. I have 23 solidly planned novels that I am pretty much constantly working on world-building and character and plot development until the time comes that I can actually begin writing them. Sometimes I will write random chapters for them for ideas that spring up. On top of those 23 planned novels, I have a couple of other ideas that are just scribbles in Scrivener right now but should evolve into full novels in the future.

I'm sort of always working on writing 4-5 novels and editing 1-2 at any given time.

I've also been writing a 4 part FanFiction story with each installment being around 170k words. I'm about halfway through the fourth installment.

 

[Biskit]

Still on the final thread for my time-travelling space-opera, but back-tracking, re-thinking, doing some actual plotting which does at least give my strange pantser brain a chance to process and come up with fixes.

Mostly working on "being there", because my usual approach to 1st POV narrative is to put myself in the place and tell the reader about the world, the characters I meet, and what everyone is up to. What I've got so far feels like I just poked my head round the door for a quick peek and wrote up my observations a month later.

On the plus side, I made a complete hash of feeding the chickens this morning because my head was so busy in a scene which finally makes this whole thread actually fit the rest of the book. That feels like progress.

 

[HareBrain]

Finished Into the Wyrmwoods, book 2 of my YA eco-mytho-fantasy series Earthwyrms. At less than eight months, it's by far the quickest draft I've ever done, and at the moment I don't think it needs a huge amount of work. It's been a great focus during the pandemic crisis, and rather than take a few months off before starting the next volume, I might jump straight in. (I want to call the next one The Llamas of Lammas, seeing as it's set around August 1st. But I probably really shouldn't, not least because I have no idea why llamas would feature prominently.)

 

[Brian G Turner]

Finished Into the Wyrmwoods, book 2 of my YA eco-mytho-fantasy series Earthwyrms. At less than eight months, it's by far the quickest draft I've ever done, and at the moment I don't think it needs a huge amount of work. It's been a great focus during the pandemic crisis, and rather than take a few months off before starting the next volume, I might jump straight in. (I want to call the next one The Llamas of Lammas, seeing as it's set around August 1st. But I probably really shouldn't, not least because I have no idea why llamas would feature prominently.)

Any progress on the Goddess Project trilogy, or is that on the backburner for now?

 

[Biskit]

I want to call the next one The Llamas of Lammas, seeing as it's set around August 1st. But I probably really shouldn't, not least because I have no idea why llamas would feature prominently.

If it helps, I got a birthday cards covered with llamas, wishing me a llamazing day.

 

[HareBrain]

Any progress on the Goddess Project trilogy, or is that on the backburner for now?

It's still on ch10, with the rest fairly coherently plotted. I had been planning to return to it after finishing Into the Wyrmwoods, and might still do so if I can't quickly pull together ideas for YA book 3. The trouble is, I enjoy writing the YA stuff more because it's not so complex, and it feels more like play. Also, I'm not sure what I would do with the third Goddess Project book. I wasn't impressed with how the publisher handled distribution of The Empyreus Proof (and I'm not sure they'd want another one anyway) and no one else is going to take it. So I'd likely be writing it for my own satisfaction and to SP for a few readers, which is fine, but makes it less of a priority as long as I still have larger hopes for the YA stuff. (Hopes I shall probably keep alive by never submitting it!)

 

[Biskit]

Plotting and consistent chronology. Apparently they make for a better book, but they go against my pantser ways.
Just as soon as the mess makes sense, I'll get back to making it up as I go along.

 

[The Scribbling Man]

Currently dusting off a novella I've been stuck on for too long. I'm more comfortable with the short story format, but this one insisted on being something more. Quite a bit has been written, but I have gaps to fill in and much tweaking to do. I'm far too picky with my prose than I should be at this stage. I'm not very good at just blasting out a first draft and taking it from there... Trying to break the habit of editing on the go. It really slows things down.

 

[Wayne Mack]

I'm in the midst of a review and major edit of my first attempt at a novel. I'm facing some hard realities as I move from something I enjoyed writing to something I hope people enjoy reading.

I completed the first draft nearly three months ago in a largely unplanned writing spree. Though I am reasonably happy with the opening and conclusion, I have realized that much of the middle section is merely a set of vignettes that really do not advance the plot line. I also recognize that my penchant for being non-confrontational has come across in the story and that makes the characters boring. I am writing some short character bios to understand what would motivate them to act in conflict with others and then decide how to reflect those attitudes.

I am now aware that I can write 80K+ words and this provides some confidence as I attempt to learn better story telling craftmanship.