The new year is well and truly here and I've decided I'd better crack on with the work on the second Pandora Wolfe book.  I've read that publishers and agents like you to be well on with a sequel because almost all book deals are for at least two books.  If someone reads and likes your book, they want to be able to pick up a sequel fairly soon before they lose interest.  Besides that, I've got a story to tell and I need to get it down on paper or it'll drive me bonkers.

I've plotted out an overall story arc which includes 5 books altogether, with the Chronomancer's Daughter being the first.  I started work on the second book before Christmas and I'd plotted out the first twenty three chapters in rough form, which will probably be about half of the book before I settled down to two weeks of indolence, turkey and wine.  I work with short chapters so a full book will probably have about fifty to sixty.  I find it easier to write the chapters like scenes in a movie and people have read the book say it helps them to keep reading. If a chapter is short then "just one more chapter before bedtime" can make people keep reading. That's the theory anyway. Maybe I just have a short attention span?

I've got the main ideas for the plot and major sub-plots sorted already and I know how the book will end, but the devil is in the detail of how you get there, how the characters develop and interact on the journey from A to B.  I've written a prologue and the first chapter in full too (which is just a superstitious thing I do - it makes me feel like I've started properly when the book has a beginning).  They'll probably change before the end too, but it helps me get motivated.

When I've got the whole thing plotted out in plan format, I'll start writing the chapters properly which is usually when things change out of all recognition.  Ideas seem to form of their own volition as the actual story develops and the characters' own personalities often take me down a route I hadn't expected to go so whatever I write in the plan will no doubt change beyond all recognition when I get going which kind of makes it seem like a pointless exercise, but experience has taught me that despite the changes I do need to make a plan.  I still remember writing myself into a corner 80,000 words into a previous book because I knew the end and the vague direction I wanted to go, but the story itself took me so far away from my ending when I actually wrote it that I had no idea how I'd get a satisfactory finish and came to a grinding halt.  It's still languishing on my hard drive somewhere as a lesson to me that I need to plan properly.

Well that's all for now.  I'm going to get started now.  Procrastination is just too easy.... and updating the blog seems a lot easier than writing a sequel so bye for now.