The Method to My Madness

I was in a conversation a while back regarding my writing projects and someone asked how it was possible I released 2 books and a novella – and am set to release a 3^rd book—in the same year. “How do you find time to write so much?” was the question.

Well… I didn’t actually write all of that this year. The 3 books were rewrites of the series I started more than 20 years ago. They’re now up to my standards and I’m thrilled to be promoting them. Long story short, those were old projects given new life.

I’m constantly writing new stuff, it just hasn’t been released yet. I’m going to do my best to explain the organization of my projects and release schedule here—but be forewarned: just because it makes sense to me, doesn’t mean it will make sense to anyone else. As my husband likes to remind me, sometimes my brain is chaos incarnate (he also likes to claim I’m an alien, but that’s nonsense.)

Anyway, here’s the list from this year (so far):

1. January Release: The Moon’s Eye
2. Rewrite project: War of the Nameless (The Relics of War)
3. Revisions: Exile (The Caein Legacy)
4. April Release: The Ballad of Alchemy & Steel
5. Outline/Drafting: Magic in the Deeps (The Mage War Chronicles)
6. Revisions: Guardian (The Caein Legacy)
7. July Release: The Talisman of Delucha
8. Outline/Drafting: Cursed Blades (The Mage War Chronicles)
9. Revisions: Harbinger (The Caein Legacy)
10. Outline/Drafting: Super-secret project that I will officially announce in December (and what I’m currently working on)
11. December Release: War of the Nameless

Ok, when I write it in list form, it does look a little chaotic. I’m bouncing between projects and different series, some not even set in the same universe.

But, I’ve learned that taking a break from something to work on a completely different piece (particularly when it comes to revisions) helps me to see the flaws and errors in my older drafts. It’s a great opportunity to correct them, once I’ve taken a step back for, ah, 3 years in the case of Exile. That time and distance allows me to see the story from a new perspective. And it helps tremendously.

I wrote Exile in 2019, Guardian in 2019-2020, and Harbinger in 2020. They’ve sat idle since that time, but now that I have plans for release, the revisions/edits have become necessary. And all 3 required a lot of work. More than I was initially anticipating.

Which brings me to the 2^nd thing I’ve learned over the years: Just because your family thinks the story is good doesn’t mean it’s ready for publication. My family is incredibly supportive of my writing, but they’re not editors and they’re not proofreaders. They have jobs and lives wholly unrelated to writing. The few people who read The Caein Legacy as I was in the process of writing it loved the story—and I agree, the story had promise in its initial phase. But the writing needed help.

Hence, the revisions.

Now, those who know me will not disagree when I say I’m a perfectionist. I will not submit a piece to my editor until I’m confident it’s the best I can make it, and with some of my older projects, that requires a lot of work on my end. (Like The Relics of War series…a complete overhaul, 100% rewrite, and much cursing on my part.) But the feedback I’ve received since releasing the first 2 books in the series has been incredible. The rewrite wasn’t only necessary, but it was the right thing to do for that project.

The Caein Legacy was in better condition when I started going through revisions. It didn’t require a rewrite, just a massive overhaul in the wording and phrasing. The first pass of revisions is what I listed above – but I’ll go through each book one more time before I send them to the editor.

I don’t like revising. It requires a lot of focus, time, energy, and patience (the last is something I’m not good at), yet it has to be done. And this is why I leapfrog my projects. I’ll finish a revision pass, then move on to writing something brand new. My brain needs that shift. I think I’d go insane if I was forced to work on revisions for more than a couple weeks in a row. The creative process of actually writing is something my mind craves. All the time.

I’ll continue to follow this crazy scheme, because as I said above, it works for me. Just know that my new releases aren’t “new” in terms of writing. They’ve often been around for years… I just don’t talk too much about them in the initial stages. I have to be happy with what I’ve produced first, and that takes time.

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