Fire Moon – Second Draft-ish

The edits from the speedread are in. I might as well call that the second draft of Fire Moon. I think I’ll celebrate by doing some writing, aka this blog post. 

It’s almost as if I’ve done this before. The first draft took about seven months. The speedread took a few weeks. The edits took about ten days. Probably about six or eight more drafts to go, if I follow my familiar routine.

It wasn’t always that way.

Some of my books were written in about a year, but those were mostly chronological non-fiction and I was working from notes. I was also working from external pressures that convinced me to finish them fast. 

Firewatcher could be estimated to take years. A fiction is a story that came to mind, but is looser. For Firewatcher, it started with an image that came to mind. Five months later, a painter was sketching it out, independently. That helped get it going. In real life, I also became convinced that AI was going to progress much more rapidly than pundits proclaimed. They thought AI would be busy about 2100. I thought 2040. By the time I finished in 2022 it looked like a close race. I’m glad I got my characters off Earth early because that freed up any ties to modern developments. Call it about seven years.

Fire Race was a race. It was written in 2024 because readers were asking for it, and I also wanted my next book, Muddling By, to be finished before the elections in 2025.

Fire Moon is my opportunity to take my time and play with the story and the characters. Oddly, the writing is smoother and quicker because I’m not rushing. Go figure, and I’m sure you’ve heard similar before.

And along the way I’ve been writing several blogs and producing Twelve Month photo essays (Hurricane Ridge is the most recent.)

I have several ideas for sequels and spinoffs, but I’m not working on those – that is until someone or something convinces me to speed them up. (The call from the spammer offering to turn it into a movie was enticing, but, you know, spam. I think.)

For the most recent ten days I’ve worked from a coffeehouse. Normally I’d do this at home, but this tiny house is, well, tiny. I don’t need much of a desk, but the coffeehouse has small tables that are just big enough to hold my laptop and my paper manuscript. It was actually a treat to have someone else make the tea. Nah. I can make tea. It was a treat to be amongst people and their distractions. 

The rest of the writing will be in a computer, so I won’t need as much table space. Much of the work will be done at home (with my local supply of tea), but I’ll work from the coffeehouse occasionally. 

I was trained as an engineer, so it is good for me to hear the rhythm and patter of non-engineer speak. Make it understandable, eh?

This next draft is when I insert the asides, casual references, and generally have fun with the whole thing. Previous books had bigger plot holes to fill and more of the world to build, but the story is simpler which may be why the holes were smaller, and the world has been defined and merely needs to be referenced.

There are more places to go than this book will allow. They can all wait for sequels and spinoffs, but those are years away (until that movie idea comes up again.)

For now, it is time to put mine aside, watch someone else’s story, and know that I look forward to writing more.