backstage pass into my writing life

I’ve been working on my second novel, The Apothecary of Stories, for about three years now. Yesssss, three years. I’ve gotten lots of practice at what I always tell my clients: that every book has its own gestational period, and we simply don’t know how long it is until it’s done!

Here’s where I am with it now:

I had written most of a full draft - about 65,000 words - when I had an idea to take the book in a different direction. 

The draft I had written started out with a single POV character, and then morphed into a book with three POV characters. It took place in a fantasy world (which sort of surprised me, as originally I’d thought the book would be more allegorical than fantastical). 

ANYWAY… then I got the idea to set the book in the modern world with some magical realism elements. And all of a sudden I could see a brand-new opening moment that I loved, so I wrote it. And loved it. Then I met up with a new writing partner, and I gave her the original opening chapter and the totally new opening chapter. She loved them both… but loved the new version even more. 

So I took some very deep breaths and decided to follow the new version where it was going.

I drove home from our meeting while listening to my writing music (which is the soundtrack to Avatar: The Way of Water - very sweeping and cinematic) and I thought about the book the whole way home.

When I got where I was going, I sat down and handwrote twelve pages of notes, basically outlining the whole new version of the book. 

I practice one of the tools I teach, which I call toggling: I toggle between the big-picture structure and the actual writing-of-scenes. I often write for a long time, following my intuition, then do a reverse outline and consider what might come next. 

Now I’ve got a pretty fleshed-out outline for the new draft and I’m writing along with it and loving it. I’ve written about six chapters so far and I’m finding that this draft is flowing out a lot more quickly, which is super fun.

How about you? How’s your writing going right now?