News You Can Bruise for 2010 August 20

Hey there. I've been writing a whole lot, but it's all been work on Constellation Games. None for immediate consumption by you. It's a really strange feeling—now that I'm no longer worried that I'll flake out before reaching the end of the novel, I can really concentrate on flexing my dramaturgical powers, bending reality to my will for the sake of a smoother narrative.

It's a mixed bag. I like slipping in a new scene where there was no scene before—the secret history of the second draft!—and I really like fleshing out a sparse exposition-heavy scene into a full drama with characters and dialogue and jokes. But I really don't like when the thing I need to say next is scattered across three chapters throughout the book, three chapters that are ultimately pointless because they don't significantly advance the plot. Such that I have to come up with a brand new framework and then snip off bits from those three chapters to decorate my tree, discarding everything else.

But, once I finish this bit, the revision will be about one-quarter done. And once we get to the halfway mark, we'll see about finally making it possible for you to start reading this sucker...

Bonus link: REST Fest 2010. I don't think I'll be going, but it looks cool.