Hold on Loosely

I've been working on the third book in The Necromancer's Inheritance trilogy. And working on it. And working on it. This book has been a bear. And not just any bear. It's a hungry bear woken early from hibernation. It's been the hardest to wrangle out of any other book I've written. The bad news is, I'm far from done. The good news is, I think I realized what's gone wrong and what I need to do to fix it.

Before I started writing this book, I had a couple of great scenes in my head. I was excited when I finally got to write them. But what I figured out shortly afterwards was that they didn't work. Both of them took my story in the wrong direction, added little to the plot, and introduced way too many characters. There was a lack of depth in my work. It's taken me a couple of months to realize this, and it's quite frustrating. I need to cut the scenes and cut several characters. I need to streamline. Trust me, when I figured this out a couple of days ago, I was ready to pull my hair out. But the most important thing to me is to make a story as good as possible before launching it into the world. So out came the scissors, and those scenes and characters are gone.

Of course, when you're up this high, don't let go of anything

This has dramatically changed the story, which has already dramatically changed since I started on it. I've had trouble finding the true beginning. I just rewrote the first scene again. I've done it I don't know how many times. But this time, it feels intimate, and I slipped right into the main character's head. I think I'm on the right track.

So the big takeaway is that it can hurt you to hold onto things too tightly when you're going into a new project. That shiny idea or scene or character you've been dying to write is probably just fine. But it might not work for the story you want to tell. I tried forcing my two scenes into the story, and it weakened the entire thing. So I pulled back, reminded myself of the three main plot lines of the story as well as the themes, outlined the first chapter yet again, and started over. Sometimes you've just got to let go.