Am I the only one who’s amazed it’s October already? A few more weeks, depending on the weather, and it’s going to be too cold to sit out on our screened-in front porch and write. (I’d stay out there regardless, but I’ve learned it’s rather difficult to type when my fingers are numb.) That’s always a bittersweet end to warm weather for me; the porch is usually my office from April to October.

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve commenced work on the revision of Portal Woes, the second novel in The Guardians series. Writing the rough draft for the sequel was both challenging and a lot of fun…and the revision is shaping up to be about the same. For me, anyway, the two processes share similarities, but they definitely have their unique challenges.

At least as far as Portal Woes is concerned, timing the first quarter of the book is one of the second draft’s little joys. So is figuring out how to catch the reader up on the events of the last book without inundating them in the dreaded exposition-dump. (I’ve been paging through books in some of my favorite series to find examples of how they managed it.)

I have a detailed timeline for the last three-quarters of the book and tweaking a few sections of those chapters to ensure they conform to it won’t be too bad. The beginning, however, is a different story. The timeline for the starting scenes that must be included is much broader. Determining exactly where and how some of them are supposed to fit into the grand scheme of things has been a challenge, but it’s starting to come together.

It reminds me of putting a puzzle together, actually. Once you get a scene or two in place, you start being able to fit the rest of them into their slots.

Not regretting learning to appreciate outlines, that’s for sure. Now that I’ve figured out how to make them work for me, they’re not quite as creative-soul-sucking as I used to think. This former seat-of-my-pants writer is officially reformed. 😀