Who’d have guessed that taking a two-week caving holiday in Vercors, France would result in a huge productivity boost in writing a caving-themed novel set in Vercors, France?
For those keeping score, I now have 34,000 words of a first draft of the my second caving themed novel written. My story outline and Scrivener targets say that I’m inching close to the half-way mark. Around that time I my progress usually grinds to a halt, as I should start bringing everything towards a satisfying conclusion, and find that half of what I’ve written so far contradicts the other half and that I’ve forgotten the resolution I’d been working towards.
I still have a goal: to get a first draft written by the end of the year. This would be easy, if I didn’t also have my day job to manage, two RPG campaigns to run, the Finnish Caving Society to chair, and a move to plan, arrange and carry out. Oh, and the first caving novel to push into some kind of a publishing pipeline, because if nobody gets to read it, nobody’s going to be interested in the second one. This could mean self-publishing, or it could mean something else. I’d actually prefer a traditional publisher, since I think my target audience mostly reads their books on dead trees and self-publishing a physical book seems prohibitively expensive.