Tagged: Miss Brandymoon’s Device

Time Flies Like An Arrow

r-avatarWoof.

Everything. Takes. Forever.

Maybe we have unrealistic expectations. Okay, that’s probably it. After all, we’ve done this several times, so of course it’ll just go faster and smoother each time from now on, right?

Jen continues to hammer away at the outlining for Son of Science Novel. It’s taking (spoiler alert!) longer than she budgeted. But it really is coming together, and now she’s nearly done incorporating all the mysterious scratches left by mysterious chickens in our various steno pads, from back when we were brainstorming the story. The process might be going faster, except she finds herself distracted by the art project happening on Kent’s side of the writing cave.

Kent continues to refine the illustration for the cover of our trilogy’s first book. It’s getting very close too, in fact, but there’s always one more tweak, one more font to try, one more configuration of the title and other text in relation to the artwork… Kent claims that he’d be making better time if not for the constant distraction of the outline being crafted on the other side of the writing cave. (Jen rolls her eyes.)

It’s worth giving your projects the time they need in order to create work that you’re proud of. With a partner sharing the load, you’ll get through the slow patches in half the time and have energy left for the fun stuff.

Spinning Plates

r-avatarRune Skelley likes to focus on just one novel at a time. Having to keep track of multiple story worlds simultaneously makes it harder to do any of them justice. Harder, but hopefully not impossible, because we’re bending our own rule right now.

Novel #1 (Miss Brandymoon’s Device) is getting a final round of line edits, while we’re also doing a read-through on the Science Novel in preparation for outlining the sequels. We’ve already rainbowed them, and now we need to really get that world under our nails to expand those rainbows into full-fledged outlines. The line editing is happening mostly by day, with evenings available for the read-through. It seems to be working pretty well, so far.

In addition to all of that, we’re getting feedback from our beta readers on Son of Music Novel. That means we have to keep all three of our story worlds in our heads, to some extent.

Oh, and we’re doing cover mockups for our first trilogy. Shifting from verbal creative mode to pictorial creative mode is refreshing now and then, although there’s a lot of creative verbiage flying around the writing cave while we converge on a common vision for these covers.

Sometimes, practical demands force you to spread yourself a little thin. Having a writing partner means you can keep more plates spinning.