The Luxury (and Curse) of Extra Time

Total words: 203
Manuscript total: 75,492

After spending about two weeks away from Empress of Dorsa, I’ve been back at it this week. And for those of you (all two of you? three of you? LOL) who actually follow my progress, you’ll notice that the manuscript has shrunk by almost 25,000 words. For reference, since I know most people — even other authors — don’t think in terms of word count, 25,000 words is roughly 90-100 pages.

So. Yeah. LOL.

However, I think this is a good thing. Usually when I get into a writing slump, it’s for a good reason. It’s some subconscious part of my brain telling me, This is not the right direction.

At least it’s not as bad (yet) as Soldier of Dorsa.

Again, the two or three of you who follow my blog regularly may remember that I scrapped about 75,000 words, or most of the length of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, when I was writing Soldier of Dorsa.

Soldier, in retrospect, is a strong story in some ways, but in other ways, it didn’t come out as strong as it could have.

There is a simple reason for this: grad school. Grad school PLUS the fact that relying upon my books as my only source of income meant that I had to get Soldier finished or else literally run out of money before the end of the school year.

So I admit it: I rushed Soldier. And if I’d been able to do it over again, with all the time in the world to finish, I think it would have been better.

Empress of Dorsa feels like a second chance.

I don’t have a time pressure on me anymore to finish Empress. For a while there, what with the lockdown and all, I felt like I was making progress quickly enough that I might actually finish before the end of the summer.

That’s not gonna happen.

You might remember that LT and I have been working together (for forever) on a YA novel called Moon & Cord, which we’ve gotten back to recently. Writing, rewriting, and rewriting that project again over the course of literally YEARS has gotten me thinking about what it’s like to have both the luxury and curse of extra time to work on a writing project.

The curse part is that part when I said “literally YEARS.” Usually, it takes me 3-6 months to draft a complete novel. Moon & Cord has been a rather different process. I assume it will get done eventually, but writing is a whole different experience when there’s no time pressure, even self-imposed time pressure.

But that’s also where the luxury part comes in. In rewriting so many times, LT and I have made dramatic changes to the story that, in the end, I am grateful we made. By the time we eventually finish, it’s going to be a strong book.

That has me wondering: If I took years to finish other projects, would I end up making dramatic changes for the better there, too?

Don’t worry — I don’t plan on taking “years” to finish Empress of Dorsa, but now that I don’t have to rush, I’m not going to. Why should I rush? I now have a source of income that’s not book-dependent, and with COVID-19 still raging in my corner of the globe, for once I want to take my time and make Empress the best story it can be, even if that means cutting another 20,000 words from it before all is said and done.