Update On Books

The editing of the 2nd draft for The Sword of Teneraz is underway. :) So far I'm pretty happy with how it is coming along, though I really need to put more focus into it so that it can come along faster.

But The Wolves of Langoor however are having some troubles. . . . :\ So I'm currently taking a break (gives me more time to focus on editing), and when I pick it back up, I'm planning on doing basically rewriting what I've written so far. I was only on about the 30th page so far, so it won't be that much to rewrite. . . . [sigh] all that hard work.

But anyways. . . my reasons for doing stated dreaded thing: It just didn't feel right, and I was at the point that the ideas simply weren't coming out unless I poked, and prodded, and–to put it plainly–tortured them to. I finally realized what I think my problem was:

1-I needed a break. Time to clear my mind and bring back to focus where I want this story to go.

2-I was relying on my own strength; my own will power and imagination. At the beginning it wasn't coming all that smoothly, because this story has a more complicated story line than any others that I've written, and to be frank, I hadn't spent as much time just sitting and daydreaming about this story, to the point that I'd figured out the structure of every sentence in a certain scene, like I have for the others I've written. So, I had heard that it was good to make a layout of your story, and I decided to give it a try. But that was my error. Don't get me wrong, for others, I'm sure it helps a TON! But for me. . . planning everything out like that left out any room for last minute spurts of inspiration, which push the story in a different direction; any room for God to give His ideas. I'd left MY author out of the planning. He's the one who had always given me those spurts of imagination that kept my pen going–He's the one who gave me that imagination in the first place! I remember when writing TSOT, a time when He stepped in and completely changed where I thought the story was going, and because of that, it turned out FAR better than it would have if I had kept going the way I'd thought it should go. I know that other authors use the layout, and it works great for them. But for me, that's obviously not the way God wants me to go. I believe, that He wants me to trust in Him; trust that He will guide the story where it needs to go; trust that, when I sit there with a blank paper, and an open mind, asking Him what He wants me to put down, that He will tell me, and I won't be at a total loss like I fear I might be.

So. . . [takes a deep breathe] the layout goes in the trash. And I feel like I'm stepping off a cliff. . . . But, like that one character that I pushed off a cliff; since the author's still breathing, I know that somehow I will survive–and in the process, have the adventure of a lifetime. :)

Assr vísa ykkarr or∂.

~ElizabethMarieKauffman~