Ink Slinger Update – 1/28/2020

January 28, 2020 at 5:00 am (Ink Slinger Update)

Ink Slinger Update

I’m hard at work on the sequel to Earthbound, Firebound, and loving it! It’s so much fun putting the pieces together and sewing them up.

I have edited chapters 1 through 3. Perhaps some people would call it re-writing because there has been a LOT of chopping and rearranging. Sometimes I’m taking away as many words as I add, but I managed to add 1,000 words to the story over the weekend. (The words flow faster when they are new, this is about smoothing and filling in the mortar between the bricks.)

I’ve set up Scene and Sequel cards that have helped me see where I’ve got holes in my plot, or the action in the chapter doesn’t lay quite right, to ratchet up the tension.

Tonight will be all about rearranging chapter 4 to make it lay right, and fill in some gaps.

I’m also working on adding a bit more scenery description this time, without slowing down the action. It’s a balancing act.

I was concerned about how many scenes and chapters the book would have so I was counting and figuring, asking other authors how many scenes in their books. Then I checked the word count in each of my first three chapters. I averaged around 3,500 words in each so I’m not going to worry anymore, I’ll just keep writing.

Since cooking is one of my major creative outlets and recipes or descriptions of food show up in novels a good bit, I’ve started sharing a recipe on Sundays. I hope to continue that.

I’ve re-joined Twitter @MeloraJohnson so feel free to follow me and I tend to follow back. I’m enjoying it a lot more the second time around, perhaps because I know more people in the publishing industry and have more contacts to follow.