March 26, 2022 - Update

Hi!

No topics jumped out at me for this week’s update. The one thing that comes to mind I’m a little reluctant to talk about. It relates to my writing process. But, since I don’t have anything better to discuss, and it’s already past 1:00 AM, I’m going with it.

The reality is I’m behind schedule in delivering this book. I’ve discussed the reasons why, the impact to others and myself, etc. a bunch already and I don’t want to rehash that. What I wanted to discuss is how it impacts the story.

The answer is, probably not enough.

I find myself in this time crunch near the end of every book. It creates this pressure that becomes harder and harder to deal with. A sane person would work hard to stay focused on the beats already outlined and work toward finishing that story.

But I am literally incapable of letting a cool idea or additional piece of wonder go. I overcomplicate everything. I spend extra time with the characters as they interact.

This happened to me at the end of book two. In my story beats, Ruwen was supposed to briefly speak with the Dungeon Core. Instead, Fractal was born. Imagine this story without Fractal and the Shattered Sun. And we haven’t even got to the most important parts of Fractal’s story yet.

It boggles my mind how things like that happen. My mind insists on something it knows is important, even if I can’t see it all yet.

I’ve learned to trust it. And it happened again this week.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but the conversation that Ruwen has was always supposed to happen. But what happens next, wasn’t.

I’m so behind, but I wrote the chapters anyway. They feel right. A hundred ideas have already spawned as my mind lets me in on the things it has planned. Some of them for events outside this series.

Now, I don’t know yet if what happened this week will impact the story like Fractal did. But I’m guessing it might.

The reason talking about this makes me uncomfortable is because that process feels like magic to me, and I don’t want to examine it too closely.

Anyway, once again I’ve filled a page with text when I had nothing to say. Sheesh.

I’ve opened up chapters 58, 59, 60, and 61 to Root.

I’ve opened up chapters 62, 63, 64, and 65 to Harvester.

I’ve added chapters 66, 67, and 68 to Step Master, Blapy’s Favorite, and Divine.

Enjoy!

Thank you for being here and supporting this story. It only gets written because I know you are out there, just as excited as I am, to find out what happens next. Thank you so much for that.

Take care,

AFK