Sixteen Chapters

I've filled in the missing pieces and the sequel to Infused now has sixteen completed chapters. The word count is now up to around 37,400. I have also gone through my first edit pass of the new chapters. In my last post I stated that what I had written as chapter fifteen might be moved to chapter sixteen and that did occur.

With Infused, my favorite chapter was the fourth chapter. In that chapter, Geoff actually talked to a girl (which was a very rare experience for him up to that point in the story), and he lost himself as he looked at (and held) the girl's leg. To me, it just told volumes about Geoff, how he was isolated from companionship and how much he longed for it.

In the new book, chapter sixteen is my favorite. I won't say what happens in it, but it is a very exciting part of the story. I have been reading chapters to my best friend on the phone as I finish them and I was gratified when I heard her gasp while I read chapter sixteen to her.

Insomnia

Sometimes I will lay in bed thinking about how a chapter in my book should be written. This will happen night after night until I actually write it down (or type it in actually).

When I went to a a few seminars presented by local authors, they told the attendees that they should make themselves write every day (or just sit in front of the computer if they can't think of anything to write). But that method seems like it would make the process less enjoyable and also lead to writing inferior prose because you are more likely to force something out to feel that you are making progress. However, it is true that if I made myself actually attempt writing more that I would be further along in this book, but since I don't have people clamoring to read my next novel, I don't always have the motivation to work on the story. Still, when I start having problems getting to sleep because of thinking about how a part of the story should be written, I know that it is time to sit down and write.

There were a couple of times when I was writing Infused when the late night thinking caused me to write a few chapters out of order, and that is also the case with the sequel. In this case, it involves skipping parts of chapters to work on parts of the main story line that is interspersed with other story lines.

So, since my last update, I have completed chapters eleven, twelve, and fourteen. Chapter thirteen only has a few hundred words in it so far, and chapter fifteen is half written fully, and half written in notes of what it needs to say. Also, there is a chance that chapter fifteen may become chapter sixteen instead. We'll see.