Re-Visioning the Writing Plan

This month has not gone as I expected and June is far from over. 

I’m thrilled that I made the 50K mark for MayNoWriMo, but with preparation for Dear Sir, I’m Yours release next week, I lost all momentum in Arcana.  I’ve actually written a bit this month — already 15K for the prequel Letters — which reminded me of how much I love the Connagher family.

Victor, Conn’s older brother, has been on my mind a whole lot.  I’ve already got him cast as Adrian Paul.  I know some of his history (thanks to Conn) and I already know who his heroine is, although I don’t quite know enough about her to say I could write in earnest.  However, I do have about 10-20K or so of “pre-notes” — loose scenes that may or may not fit the story, etc.  I have the “hook” and it cracks me up.  Now, I have sooo many ideas to make that story deeper, richer, a killer fun story.

So here I am, dreading trying to get back into Arcana after it went totally cold.  Dreading having to re-evaluate my outline and figure out what I can cut since I’ve only covered 30 of a planned 100 sections (and already sitting at 50K).  Meanwhile, I’ve got a handful of revisions I need to do on the Maya story so I can get the next round of queries out.  I’d really really like to get cracking on the next Connagher story for Samhain to keep that pipe filled, especially now, while the ideas and voices are hot in my head.

And I realized that I really should probably shuffle my projects around.  The Maya story has a timeline built into it because of the whole 2012 end of the world thing.  I’m not using that at all — the story could be set at any time — but I like the idea of this book coming out BEFORE then to take advantage of all the hype.  I was really stressed out mid-May, wishing I could get those revisions done but I didn’t dare stop working on Arcana at the time.  Now, I might as well take advantage of that coldness and rip up the Maya story.

So for the rest of this month, my priorities are:

1. Revision Xibalba II and return to queries.
2. Prework on Victor and Shiloh’s story.  I don’t know what the title is, but I know the theme song, so I’ll refer to it by that:  Time is Running Out by Muse.