In Which I Write About Writing

Today, I was very productive, though not in the way I should have been. I'm taking the GRE this Saturday, and therefore should be studying (I got all questions but half of one right for the verbal reasoning section and all questions but five wrong for the quantitative [math] section in my diagnostic test...you can see where I need the work). However, I was feeling a bit of inspiration last night after writing chapter two of the sequel to The Shadowguard (a title my brother heartily made fun of), so I spent all day working on world building and character backstories.

I now have enough information that I'm not including in the stories that I could probably put together a companion! Not that I'm going to--it's unnecessary for readers, though highly necessary for me. At least, I'd hope so. My hope is that the characters and story will be able to make it clear, though I am of course not the right person to judge whether or not that is true.

So, now, I have the ancient history of the continent (which doesn't have a name, as yet...I simply call it "the island continent", though I should really fix that...), the backgrounds of each important character (and some not-important characters), the first chapter and a half of the second book, and I've created a storyboard for the whole book, so I'm not writing blind like I was with the first. Initially, I wanted to name the book Shades of Gray (or possibly the series), but that was before Fifty Shades of Gray came out. You can bet I scrapped that title in a second! It's not something I want my books associated with. So now I'm brainstorming ideas for that as well.

This time, my editing hopefully won't take quite as long, as I won't have to go back and delete characters or change the plot (since my entire story changed by the end of the book). When I ran out of ideas, I went for a walk through my garden or played with my dogs. It was genius. Don't know why I haven't done this before.

Time to type up and print out my storyboard! Writing to commence almost immediately, and I shall resume editing as soon as I get stuck (which will probably be soon).

Also, I want to say thanks to my BFR's for braving the horrid syntax and plot holes!