Tales from the Circle

So I've gone back to work and it's draining, not to mention the time it takes up, which means a lot less time and energy for me to write or read. I had great plans for September, since it's Self-Published Fantasy Month , but alas, I probably won't be able to put most of them to action what with adjusting to work again. I did still get some writing done these past few days - just super slowly... still, it's progress, and I'm glad I've been able to find little bits of time here and there for writing. I've also been thinking about the story and how I want it to develop so I guess that also counts. But that's not surprising. I've always found that the ideas come in droves when I have no time for them and then when I finally get free time it's just a matter of taking those ideas that I jotted down or the ones I still remember and writing them out. Well, I'd better go try to finish that scene I started earlier. In the meantime, if you want ...

I usually think of planning as a matter of personal preference. And I often see others asking “what kind of planner are you?” Or “Are you a plotter or a pantser?” But I’ve recently started to realize that the amount and type of planning I do for a novel is not dependent on me, it’s more dependent on the story itself. Planning a fantasy novel is significantly different from planning a sci-fi novel, for example. That much is obvious to me. But even within these different genres each individual story needs a different type of planning. I’ve written a few novels now, only one of which has been published so far, but I’d like to look at the type of planning I did for each one. Children of the Dead City - Epic Fantasy ( Published ) This novel takes place in the fantasy world I’d been building for about 15 years before I wrote it. It’s actually the second version of the same story. I wrote an entire novel that focused on the character Hawk (but his name wasn’t Hawk back then) and...