Allan Joyal: Blog

Life came at me, and won the wrestling match 5-2.

That's about the best way to describe it. I'm working on short sleep, short food and just short temper I guess. It was one of those weekends where you end up thinking about sleeping in forever.

Needless to say, not a whole lot of writing got done, and I'm now about 1500 words behind the pace I try to set. It's not a complete disaster, but it may be a while before I get back up to speed. At least I am writing, even if its a new idea and the opening chapter is.... clunky, so far.

Hopefully this just means my muse somehow got into the vodka and gin again. We'll know more soon.

My writing has slowed down the last couple of days. I think its mostly just a bit of fatigue rather than me running out of ideas. Heck, I've put at least a few minutes into 6 different stories in the past 2 weeks. Most goes into Living, but I've worked on an Amazon novel, the next Swarm Cycle story I plan to write, and a couple of outlines for future Amazon novels.

Ideas do come constantly. I don't even get around to writing down all of them. And some of my notes will end up making no sense to me a year from now because I didn't write down enough when I did put something down.

I do have a good backlog of Living chapters to post, so I'll probably keep up the posting rate for now. I am going to pull back on writing Living though. I want to get my next Amazon novel out in April or May which means I need to put about 40-50K words down, and that is probably half a months output.

I can't say how much more Living there is. I am coming towards a point where I could say "this is the end of this part of the tale" but I know I'd have people begging for the next part. I'm probably going to see how the scenes I'm working on turn out. Its possible I'll be taking a break after them. It will be a good place to pause and allow my muse to reveal the next plot threads.

For those asking, I do have an inkling of what A Promise on Ishtar (working title) will be about. HOWEVER, there are 2 other Swarm Cycle stories that I feel must be written before I can start Promise. There are characters and plot threads I need to introduce and in some cases the characters deserve more than a quick mention in passing. However, to do that requires....

Both of the 2 stories have been started (actually I worked on them before Building), but neither is close to complete. I may start posting a chapter a week from one, but it would just be a chapter a week. I have too many stories to work on to give it the level of attention Living has received the past 6 weeks.

I've continued to write as much as I can. Somehow I have managed to increase my output quite a bit. Around March 10, I was on a pace that had me 3,000 words behind a 2,000 words per day pace. After this weekend I'm almost 2,000 words above a 2,000 words per day pace. Barring a mistake or a bad day I'll finish with more than 65,000 words for the month.

It's a huge part of why I've been able to keep up posting 3 chapters per week.

I do have some more stories about the Sa'arm universe that are in a way in the works. I expect that I'll try to post one chapter per week once Living comes to a close.

But I'm not sure when that will happen. Living a CAP Based Present has a long, long way to go it seems.

Well, I've been doing a lot of writing so far this month. and having a ton of fun doing it.

I'm also coming up of new story ideas. I might try to write a few chapters for here, but at the same time there are several tales that will definitely end up on Amazon someday.

Now, I do have a quick mini-reply to the comments posted about Living a CAP-based Present. Several readers felt that I had inserted a few plot twists that didn't sit well with them. Primarily surrounding the problems that Corsica had at launch. I do have what I often jokingly say is a "Madness to my method." There are reasons that my plot twisted the way it did. I've tried to put some details into the chapters, and more will be added in future chapters. I do ask that people remember that I'm developing many things and exploring the Sa'arm universe in my own way.

Hopefully everyone is enjoying the tale. And if all goes well, I can keep posting for quite a while. Or until the tale comes to an end. I'm not sure how many chapters will be required before I reach the end of the current set of plot threads. I know a few things will happen, but I've already had more than a few surprises.

Well, I've been maintaining a solid pace in writing recently. I'm a bit behind where I'd like to be, but just one great day would put me on a 2,000 words per day pace for the month, and that is more than acceptable. Although it does mean that I'd write the equivalent of half of a novel in a month.

But then again Living has gone over 200,000 words and this after Building was over 300,000 words. These are not novels (which usually top out at 110,000 words), but epics. Fun to write, but extremely time-consuming.

I did open up comments, I figure it is right, although I don't promise to read them often. I'm growing bad about responding to e-mails. I do read all e-mails and ones noting errors are saved until I have a chance to fix the chapters. I am very behind on doing that, but its revise or add chapters. I feel like adding chapters at the moment. :)

I might.... very might though, try posting some first chapters here for other stories. Either that or I'll offer them as .docx files to people. This isn't for sure. I have to decide which stories I want to work on next, and I can see how allowing people here to read the start of one of my tales might increase interest. I have to double-check the rules though. I don't want to get anyone in trouble for me doing that.