It's strange to even think about the fact that Mourning Gloria has been out two years today. Beyond strange, really.
Then again, this year has been so far beyond strange by itself. Considering the fact that I have family who definitely fall into high risk category of Covid, I've continued to keep myself quite isolated when possible. As a writer, that isn't completely out of the norm, since most of my work takes place on the computer anyway. I'm grateful that the pandemic hasn't really had a negative impact on my creative productivity, and I hope that everyone it has affected in such a way will be able to get into their own kind of groove soon.
Near the beginning of spring this year, I started working on the first draft of AOWG--which I realize doesn't even have a proper synopsis on this site at the time of writing this, so I should fix that. Typically, I'm not one to take breaks from drafts I'm in the middle of to work on other things. Especially first drafts. But when I got my latest version of TCS back from an editor of mine, I couldn't resist shifting gears to work on it. Sorting through those comments and making necessary revisions took the majority of the summer, but it went incredibly well. Now I'm trying to get back into writing AOWG, and I have the goal to finish that first draft by the end of the month.
That will give me all of October to regroup, be there with my best friend as she gets married to a freakin' stellar guy, and figure out what I'll work on for November's NaNoWriMo. Just because Every Mo is a WriMo for me, doesn't mean I don't go especially hard in November.
And throughout these last few months, I've had about four concrete ideas for new books pop up and try to develop in my head. One is another story in the Enchant series, like TCS and TDoE, while the other three have all stemmed from thoughts of--wouldn't you know it--the book that's two years old today.
One would be a first try at co-writing an actual book (with fellow author and engaged friend mentioned above), another would be more of a companion novel from the perspective of Mourning Gloria's antagonist, and the third would be an entirely separate story taking place after Mourning Gloria, exploring a bit more of those side characters that I loved so much whether they got a lot of page time or not.
These four new ideas have now been added to the list of other ideas I haven't actually started writing yet, but it's really nice to have a kind of queue waiting in the wings. I remember back in 2011 when I was writing the first draft of Mourning Gloria. Aside from two barely existent concepts that later became TCS and TDoE, it was the only idea I had at the time. I vividly remember being so terrified then that I would never get another idea again after I finished writing it. That was probably one of the reasons the first draft was so ridiculously long. But that wasn't the case at all.
Instead I find, the more you exercise creativity, the easier it is for that creativity to find you. Sometimes it's harder than others and life gets in the way, but you get back to it and you keep at it. For me, that's what makes the difference and keeps inspiration in working order.