5 January 2017

It figures that I would get (mildly) sick right when I decide to give the post-a-day thing a whirl. All I want to do is curl up in bed. I don’t even feel particularly bad; I just have zero energy and sleep is constantly calling my name (this is why you should have no sympathy at all for me…I’m sick but not even half as sick as most people get with a URI.) I got it into my head that I would get in bed and read, but that lasts for all of two minutes before I shove the Kindle aside and close my eyes.

The one thing it’s been good for: weeding through the things in my brain that are trying to create the next couple of Wick stories. I’ve got two books going right now; one is the third book in the Wick Chronicles, the other will most likely be shuffled off into its own set, tentatively Wick After Dark. The former is a good 80,000 words along, the latter is just a compilation of notes, but I’ve got over 55 pages of notes and I’m not done.

The thing tripping me up is that I’m not quite satisfied with the next Wick book. I love the story; it’s fun and is swirling with sci-fi and fantasy elements, but the execution it just a bit off to me. It’s been just off enough to have set is aside in favor of writing notes for the too-oft-requested-from-a-single-person-Char-you’re-a-prevert WAD novel. I’ve let it simmer in the back of my brain, and while I’ve been lying in bed dozing, it started to bubble and a few of the bubbles popped, and I realized where I went wrong.

I started in the wrong place. If I wrote both books at the same time, Wick 3 would take place smack dab in the middle of Wick After Dark, which in the hands of a much more skilled writer would work well, but I:

1-don’t want to force people into buying two books to get the meat of one story.
2-Wick After Dark will not be a YA book, so it needs to be separate.
3-I think I’m good but not quite that good. I could do it, but something would suffer for it.

Haven't tried this, but hey...it could be good

Mainly my sanity.

I can see the new start to Wick 3; it drifted in front of my eyes the way the opening to The Flipside of Here did when I was training for the 2010 3 Day…although, this time, perhaps, cold medicine may have been involved and may play a part in how I write it. Well, maybe not cold medicine when I’m actually writing. Booze is more likely. Thanks to my son I have a new love of Fireball and am tempted to test out the “Write drunk; edit sober” adage.

At least something good will come out of this crud.

Possibly a drinking problem, but hey…