The Pace of Progress

 It's close. I can feel it.

That's the sensation I've got right now, thinking about the next book. While it was out for beta-reading, Trouble got to sit on the shelf for a while while other pieces got my attention. There's a pace to my story development, and I'm only beginning to recognize that part of that pace is taking time away. Letting the story stand (and be someone else's concern) gave me both the luxury of fresh eyes when it came back, and motivation to send it out for reading. What I'm now trying to manage is balancing the urge to finish the piece with the extra time it's going to take to be done.

At first, I'd vaguely targeted a March release, and obviously that didn't happen. April feels unlikely, now that we're past the midpoint. Maybe something summerish? I don't have a fixed date in mind, and I do find deadlines weirdly motivating to work towards. I thank my rhino's Midwestern Work Ethic, stamped into its DNA. Knowing the when something must be done gives me the drive to actually work on it. I've been through Trouble through enough drafts and rewrites now that it's hard to measure progress, so getting away was a very good thing. Keeping at it is the very difficult thing.

But it's close. In the story, two boys stumble over a point where local magic crosses into their world (and ours) and once they find the key to tap into that magic, it haunts them in cycle with the moon. I feel like my protagonist and deuteragonist here, as a new month rolls around and I feel the draw of "is this the month in which it will be done?" I still don't know ("summerish") but at least I feel like the answer is more "soon" than "someday."

How do we know when a piece is complete? It's less clear when you're playing all the roles in the publishing stage play: author, publisher, marketer. And I'm still learning the processes myself, on how to hone not just the words but the lattice that they're hanging upon. How do you adjust a sentence, add a "turn" to the paragraph, give the scene some weight, and the chapter significance? Time away from the work is doing a lot of lifting. I honestly can't believe that I handed some of these over to people to read, but now, with time, I see gaps in the narrative flow, or opportunities to show character growth. I'm better able to see my many crutches as my pace of re-reading increases. ("Just how much do I use I'd seen? Answer: too many.)

So the pace of progress is slow, and slower than I expected. (Maybe late summerish.) But it's also progress, which is a wonderful thing. Like my experiences drafting and developing a story, my "refine and revision" skills will, in time, be more reliable, less slow-to-start, and more comfortable. This is the pace of human creation, a rate that demands a pause, a rest among the musical notes so the rhythm becomes clear. Slow and steady we plod onwards towards the finish line that I know is waiting. I can feel it.

🧩🦏