Meredith Mansfield, Author

Okay, so this week I’ve mostly been trying to get back into the first draft of the fourth book in the DUAL MAGICS series, likely to be titled WAR OF MAGIC or possibly WAR MAGIC. Maybe WARRIOR OF MAGIC. (But maybe not any of those if I get a better idea. Titles are hard.)

I posted before about the necessary shift in mind set from editing to writing a first draft. The first draft is just to get the story down. I’m not supposed to worry about whether I’ve got the right word or even whether a sentence is awkward. Or whether I’ve put in enough description or too little. Or whether, at the start of the fourth book, readers have enough of a re-introduction to the characters and setting. And a million other things that I worry very much about when I’m revising or editing. Which, of course, is what I was most recently doing–revising and editing the final draft of BEYOND THE PROPHECY.

I’ve had more trouble than usual getting started again with this story–and it’s because I made a mistake.

When I stopped work on this first draft to do the final revision and polishing edit on BEYOND THE PROPHECY, I didn’t stop when I had a good vision of what would happen in the next chapter, as I should have. No, I stopped at a place where I had to make a time jump (over some boring bits) and I had only a vague idea of what came immediately next. That was a very bad idea. It made it doubly hard to start building some momentum.

I have to keep reminding myself that this draft doesn’t have to be good–or even complete–so long as it gets the story down so I can fix it.

I have–finally–gotten one chapter down. (Though even then, I had to just put a note in saying “More here” and move past a spot that had me stopped for a day.)

Now, I’m going to start getting away from the planning and more into that war promised in the (probable) title. Hopefully, that should let me build up some momentum.