First, a shout-out to Blondie (Blondemaverick) for telling me about Penana and inviting me to help her out with her own works of fiction. Her self-derision of her writing skills is truly undeserved, in my not-so-humble opinion. I consider her a good friend whom I've known for a few years now, and an exquisitely creative mind.
Second, and more importantly, allow me to brag on my family. I like to say I have 3 princesses: my wife, Sarah (which actually means "princess," and inspired my pet name for her since we first started dating), and my two daughters, i.e. my little- and littlest-princess. Sarah has been an amazingly supportive teammate throughout our relationship, encouraging and pushing me to succeed in whatever I've had on my plate at the time. During the darkest time of my life, my then-unborn eldest saved my life, for which I owe her the world. Between her love of prehistoric and modern animals, and my youngest's fascination with horses and machines, not to mention their adorable (and not-so-adorable) sibling dynamics, I'm never short on inspiration, laughs, and "aw!" moments.
Now for the nitty-gritty of this blog:556Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrSC0XK69av
I started NaNoWriMo last year in the final week of November, so, too late to really benefit from the annual writing challenge. However, around that same time they were introducing some new tools to help writers keep up their momentum throughout the calendar year, which I took advantage of and by the beginning of spring had completed the rough draft of a novel I'd been working on for over a year at the time. A two-fold accomplishment for me, since not only was the draft itself complete, but it was also the first time I had actually finished any kind of a novel manuscript - all previous attempts had been abandoned, some forgotten until randomly rediscovered in the proverbial trunk-in-the-attic of my back-up and saved files.556Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡofHrVA1TR0
However, as usual, life had a way of distracting me from progressing the project any further, and thus the drafts have sat untouched for nearly 6 months now. Since most of those distractions have now passed, and with NaNoWriMo 2018 looming in just over a month, I'm gearing up to push hard to turn the (very) rough draft into a publisher-submittable manuscript. This will require transcribing my drafts from the pencil-and-paper format I used to make them into digital format so that I can more easily edit, rewrite, and revise the canon as a whole, not to mention share it with proofreaders and beta readers. largely, I suspect the story will remain as it is in the draft - unpolished will become polished, but otherwise unchanged. A few characters or details I have in mind to alter slightly, or expound more upon, but that won't significantly impact the overall tale. I don't think so, anyway.
In any event, during October I'll focus on analogue-to-digital transcription with the goal of having the remainder of work to be done in that regard complete on or before Halloween. Then, on November 1, I'll intend to start in earnest the polishing phase, occasionally putting down some draft-work for my novel's sequel (which, to be honest, I've already started volume's 2 and 3 so that I can better resist the compulsion to put every idea for the overall tale into a single volume - the work would never end otherwise), and/or random pieces of flash-fiction. These side projects I'll definitely be posting here for any who wish to see it. As protective as I am of my core project (PoP:H), I may eventually share chapters of it here as well, to hopefully get constructive critiques and suggestions.
Until next time, this has been Zim the (in)Vader - may the force be with you!
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