Seaspear Update 5.12.12.

me looking dumb while eating strawberries and organizing novel thoughts

Well, it's almost been a full year since I started the second draft of Seaspear.  I find that crazy, especially since that means the Era of the First Draft was even longer ago.  I've struggled through so much writer stuff since then - character depth, setting, point of view, running themes....whew.  The story has changed so much.  But school is done for the summer (cheers!) and I'm going to try to have the second draft done before I leave for vacation the last week of May.

It's going to be hard.  But I'm still going to try.  I'm about 50 pages in to the rewriting / editing process and I have over 80,000 words, and about 160 pages total, though a lot is going to be chopped up or taken out or added in, so who knows what it will look like when it's complete.

Starting during finals week, I began writing every day, around 1000-2000 words per.  I finally got to the point where I feel like the real story has finally begun, and I illustrated that by starting a new POV.  I was going to try to do the whole thing in Ren's POV, but I decided that was not going to work if I wanted the story to be at its best.

In a way, that's a relief, because I get to keep my whole subplot of ambitious pirates, as well as Prince Cyrus's inner struggle about his father the king.

Also, in case any of you didn't know, I'm a Christian who writes - but not a Christian writer, since I don't want to sound preachy.  However, I was feeling like there wasn't any substance to Seaspear, so yesterday I threw in a bit of conversation between the king and one of his advisors - the main villain, actually - concerning the inherent nature of man.  It's a perfect theme for the book, and I can do it subtly without being preachy.  Besides, any really good book should have some contraversial elements, or something for discussion.  It's all about vulnerability, I guess.  Do you have any of these elements?

Anyway, the posts in May may be a little sparse or just void of content, since I'll actually be writing my novel, and then will be on vacation, which means an escape from all evil computers.

It's ridiculous how long the novel process takes - there has to be a quicker way.  Because I'm thinking, when I finish, and if I decide to submit this thing to an actual publishing house, how long will it take for me to find a place to accept it?

I guess I can't worry about that - I have to just write.  But if all goes well, I'll be releasing the first chapter of Seaspear on this blog soon!

- Ellyn