Just got back from ConFusionSF a couple of weekends ago. Met lots of cool new people and had some very in-depth discussions about my last two projects. I knew that the contemporary novel I’ve called Harmony in Three Voices was going to need a major re-write but changing from a 2^nd person POV hadn’t been part of the plan. I like the use of 2^nd person POV but that has been the biggest stumbling block for anyone not-me in reading the story. When I point out that Hugo Award Winning N. K. Jemisin uses 2^nd person I was told (very kindly but very bluntly) that I was not N. K. Jemisin and even she didn’t start her novel with in that POV.

The other change is that the medieval murder mystery was not working for me. The structure needed for a good mystery is not the sort of writing I enjoy — or am good at — and after about 14 months of writing I had a 50k draft and about 5k into a rewrite and it a) was not good and b) I was not enjoying the process.

Let’s face it: I don’t write for my tens of readers. I write for me, I write for the fun I have during the ride. The process. If I’m not having any fun writing it, why do it? Or, at least, why do that project?

Once I got to the point of allowing myself to shelve some 50ish thousand words and several YEARS of research, I started to feel great, relieved to not be going through that slog! And sad, mourning the book-that-won’t-be. And terrified! What now?

I’ll be noodling about that in this blog, because while I have some thoughts, I don’t really know yet. There’s another story I’ve been thinking about for years, a world I’ve already done some writing in and so I may take the good parts from the failed mystery and move them to the other world and…. Idk. But that’s what’s next.