Well, so much for the goal of getting 50k more words into draft 1 during November.

It's called writer's block, and it's deadly.

Roughly, and without spoiling stuff, Silvergates: Navigator is supposed to contain 3 parts. Not exactly equal in size, but there's basically 3 sub-arcs. I could drop one and pad the others, but the other two are the kind of sub-arcs you can delay, but not drop.

And of course it's one of the latter that is giving me problems.

Spoiler: Spoiler

It involves tall, blue hairless people with six fingers, in case you're wondering. Not surprising they have to feature big time, eh?

I have a start and the end of the arc, but I haven't really figured out how you get from A to B. And this time, I've learned from book 1 not to charge blindly and then have to fix and hurry everything.

Normally, that means I should focus on writing the easy bits, and worry about that later. But every time I open the draft, I go back there. It's like that scabby itch you know should be left alone but can't let go.

I talked a bit, and everyone suggested to switch to other things, let it rest for a while, and focus on different stories instead. If you've been following my other series, you've probably noticed chapter publication had a hole in it early during the month (I was busy scratching that scab), and has picked up significantly since. It was always intended to serve as a way to get the creative juice flowing, I just did not expect to, you know, actually need it.

So, here it is. At the moment, I'm just opening the draft a couple times a week, jot down a note or two on ideas, and then close it, until I can figure out how to get out of the blues. Writing a skill description. Making some random stuff about potential locational mechanisms for Psionics (that, and the Necromancy one are both particularly tricky to figure out how you can plausibly tie skills to locations. Well, necromancy, probably easier. After all, they did visit a tomb during book 1. But psi?). Anything to put some early meat into the story while I try to unplug the drain and let the water of creation flow again.

By the way, youtube has decided to troll me and subject me to repeated ads about Master Class, where bestseller authors are supposed to teach me how to write. Either they found out about me being on RR, or there's something worse afoot and the universe is out to mock me.

(the only bit I like from the ads are Neil Gaiman's words "The art of the second draft is to make it look like you knew what you were doing all along".)

I'll keep posting an update every month to keep you informed, since I don't blog. You just have to watch the word total in the title to know if the update content will be good news or so-so news.