Building Momentum

Those moments in the writing process that make it all worthwhile. 🔥📚

From the beginning, the process of writing my current book has been different than the previous three. For The Gatherer series, I worked with a writing coach/mentor who I met with every two weeks to go over the work I’d produced and to discuss any trajectories of the plot that needed changing.

It was a circular process that kept looping back on itself so that when I finished the draft, it didn’t require as many revisions as a pure first draft normally would.

This book is different. I started out with an idea, worked on an outline, and wrote the first draft. To date, no one has seen the manuscript as I’m no longer working with a writing coach. I’ve been working on it, stuck inside my own brain without any external input. Which is at times liberating and also terrifying.

Which is why today is such an auspicious day. Moments ago, I signed a contract with an editor who will provide me with much needed feedback once I’ve finished my current run through. Incorporating those edits will then set me up for another round of edits which will need to be included before it is sent off to the copy editor for, yes, another round of edits. The process of getting a novel to a unified, polished manuscript is one of endless edits and a unique form of torture.

The good news is that today, along with signing with an editor, I am half way through the first round of edits. The end is still a long way off but with a deadline ahead of me and the hardest edits done (the first half always needs the most work) I can feel the momentum starting to build. It’s one of the best parts of being an author.

Book Talk

I recently re-read this as it is one of those books that stays with you long after you’ve finished. The Woman in the Polar Night gives such a visceral experience of living in the high arctic that it feels as if you experienced it yourself.

The story is about a woman who travels to the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen (now Svalbard), Norway in the 1930s to meet her husband and live in a tiny hut for a full year. She experiences extreme darkness, bitter cold and storms lasting for weeks on end. It is an incredible story of her willpower and endurance. What makes the story memorable, however, is her description of the landscape and the beauty of this harsh, stunning place that she falls in love with. By the end, she has no wish to leave and has been profoundly changed by the experience. I highly recommend it for the language, her courage, and a glimpse into a year in the life of a true adventurer.

Geek Corner

One of my research books for my WIP is The Physics of Consciousness by Ivan Antic. I have multiple quotes from this book pasted on my walls, and it was the first book that started to change how I understand reality.

Having been trained as an electrical engineer, I was familiar with Maxwell’s equations that explain how electric and magnetic fields are linked and produce electromagnetic waves. Antic claims that the original equations encompassed both Hertzian and non-Hertzian waves, that is parts that explained the manifested and un-manifested realities. Apparently, the rulers of the time used other mathematicians to change the equations immediately after Maxwell’s death removing the part that explained the un-manifested reality. In his words, “These shortened, falsified and crippled Maxwell equations have been taught in universities all around the globe to this day.”

It’s incredible to think where we might be in the world today, if those equations hadn’t been altered and we had been able to explore reality to its fullest since 1879.