Drafting has begun for the final book in my high fantasy series

It took until the middle of this month for me to feel like the outline was finished, but I finally started with the v1 draft of the last story that I'll tell about Reihana and Thorne's struggle to control the Archive's fate. I have (what I think are) some really exciting ideas, so I'm eager to get things down on the page quickly. Hopefully that motivation stays with me through the first 25k words or so, because after that knowing I  have a quarter of the book drafted will keep driving me forward.

One thing that I'm doing differently this time around is see how many days in a row I can produce quality word counts. The key here is "quality," because I don't want to just dump words on the page to tell myself, "Hey, I wrote today." It doesn't matter if it's 100 or 1000 words as long as the content is worth keeping. So far my longest "days in a row" combo is twelve. Not bad, but I think I can do better. Total word count for April was 7k words, which is an OK start for being at it for only two weeks.

Really focusing on drafting the new book has taken some of the sting out of the rejections I've gotten (so far two) for my last manuscript. I've got other queries still pending, but I'm no longer obsessing over when (or if) I'll get a response. I know the manuscript will find a home eventually, but like all writers once the draft is complete, edited, and polished, we want to see it out in the world sooner rather than later.

Now that I'm in "writing mode," that means my free time with other media is going to drop quite a bit. At the start of the month I read an old Star Wars novelization (written in 1978) called Splinter of the Mind's Eye. Characters (Luke & Leia) didn't follow now established conventions, and it was obvious the author had no idea how to write about Force powers. Even so, I thought it was an interesting read, if from nothing more than a historical perspective.

Thanks for stopping by.