Writing books is a weird activity, if I haven’t made that abundantly clear yet.
I mean, honestly, I don’t know how many people out there read these posts when I actually post them (hello everyone who does!) versus people who will be viewing these posts months or maybe even years later (hello all of you fine folks!). But if you’ve been reading the last few weeks of posts, you’ll notice that the novel I’m working on (“Starocean’s Eleven” is the working title, but it will definitely be called something else when I’m done) has been causing me a lot of trouble.
It’s not my usual style. I’ve done a few action novels (the Tintian novels are action-adventure with a little dash of mystery thrown in), a few military sci-fi (Spinward Expanse and Starconvoy EH-76), a YA action (Queen of the AIs), and one or two space westerns (Caitlyn Morcos and Wind’s Howling Rage)… but none of them require the level of planning and careful plot that a good cyberpunk thriller requires. I kinda need to know what my characters are going to do, at least broadly speaking, before they do it, and that’s not my usual style.
I really like exploring with my characters, learning about both them and the world at the same time. I have a loose plot for Starocean’s Eleven, but each time I sit down to write a chapter I have to expand on that loose plot because so many pieces need to fit together at the end to give a “sudden but inevitable” conclusion…
The moral of the story here is that the more I want to pick up the pace in my writing, the slower I end up having to go. This is a weird workflow for me as a result, but I hope the ends will justify the means!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!