As I stated in this post, when I am immersed in a writing project my blog suffers. It’s been weeks since my last post; every day I had the intentions of writing a review, since I did quite a bit of reading despite the writing and edits, but there never seemed to be time.
Since my last post, I’ve made a surprising amount of progress with projects. Serenade went through heavy edits and will soon begin the second beta round. Not only that, though—in my free time after I finished the round of edits, I started a novella.
Perhaps I had the story in me for so long that all I needed was an outline to help gain momentum. A couple of weeks after I started the project, I finished with a 41k manuscript. It’s a first draft nobody can read yet, but it was refreshing to know I could start something new and make progress.
It’s related to Dissonance and Serenade—it’s a novella based on the character Meredith, whose backstory is powerful. It seemed fitting to give her a spotlight. I learned how different a character can look when seen through the eyes of another protagonist.
Every writer should try seeing their characters from new angles, discovering strengths and weaknesses. It’s not necessary to write a whole book, but you learn quite a bit by exploring a different perspective for a few paragraphs.
Later I will write a blog post about this. Today I just wanted to update the site so it isn’t so dead—I promise I was doing something productive! There are two manuscripts on the way now.
I hope you’ve had a good summer so far! What books have you enjoyed most over vacation?
Mariella Hunt 