[Novel Update] Taking it From the Top

It's been over a month since I posted one of these updates. My hope at that time was that by now I'd be getting ready to start writing entirely new chapters, but I haven't made it that far. I've had a ton of distractions - holidays, snow days, appointments, etc., etc., - all conspiring to limit my writing time. And I just have a hard time sitting down and banging away at the keyboard every possible minute that's available to me. My attention seems to wander easily, partly because I need to step away and let my creative voice catch up to my typing speed.

Still, I've made some good progress in that time, of a sort. I've gone back to the beginning of the novel. I wrote a prologue that I'm really happy with, which does a solid job of introducing some characters and information that becomes crucial to the book around a dozen chapters in. Then I attacked chapters one, two, and three, making revisions and changes, and editing them based on the feedback I'd received from my writer's group. One of the changes included tacking what used to be chapter four onto the end of chapter three. That in turn made room for chapter 6b, which previously had no home. It's the new chapter 4, which I'm editing and revising right now. It's a fun chapter starring a really fun bad guy who I've found I love to write.

Getting chapter 6b (now chapter 4 - try to keep up) in place is key for a couple of reasons. The first is that I couldn't very well number two of my chapters 6b and 6c, so that was a real problem. But it really bothered me that the early part of my book was broken and unreadable by anyone  I might want to share it with. When I'm caught back up to chapter 16 (the last fully-written chapter at this point), those chapters will all be in their more-or-less final state unless I make changes later that need to be applied to the early part of the book retroactively.

I can really see the improvements, though, which is huge. I can see that I'm a better writer now than when I started. I can see my own mistakes early on and correct them. It gives me hope that when I write new material, I can avoid many of those mistakes the first time. Mostly, though, I'm really happy with the overall direction of the novel and the story I'm telling in it. I think it's going to be awesome when it's done. Whenever that ends up being.