It’s been a couple of years since I published The Rose of Amzharr and shared my very own fantasy world with, well, the world. Since I started writing the novel, I’ve always had grand plans to grow the universe and tell many more tall tales of talking squirrels, molemen, mortals and immortals all living side by side, and sometimes getting along with one another.
Whilst I haven’t been short of enthusiasm, I have found myself short of time on many occasions. The day job has definitely played a role in this, but so too has the actual and very real joy of having a young border collie join the family (my god they just don’t stop do they).
All this has resulted in very slow progress with anything Amzharr related. I have been trying to do short bursts of writing as and when I can, but one of the issues I find is that story telling tends to be a process I warm up to. Whilst I can write a couple of thousand words over four hours, its not evenly spaced and the first hour tends to result in a number of failed starts and a negative word count! This makes doing say half an hour a day pretty pointless.
More than that, my usual approach to writing has probably hindered progress more than anything else. I like to write a story down from beginning to end and then rewrite from beginning to end, improving and reworking as I go. This process doesn’t work when you forget what you have written one week to the next and realise that you are covering exactly the same ground in chapter 3 as you covered in chapter 1. Not helpful. To compound it all I have been chopping and changing chapter orders, as well as making several changes to the intended direction of the story.
All in all, I have contributed as many, if not more, issues as my day job and the result? That whilst the second book’s word count has grown to a reasonable 24,000 it’s about as far from coherent as I am after a bottle of scotch. So, after a lot of umming and aahhing I’ve made a massive decision. To bin the whole thing.
Worry not though, after much thought I realise it’s for the best, giving me a clean slate to start on, but with the benefit of already building out a lot of ideas that will be fed into the new draft. It is an exciting new start, and one that I’m keen to get moving with. I spent a decent amount of Saturday expanding on my previous plans and now have a much more solid foundation to work from. I’ve also got a few ideas to try and deal with the challenges I find of trying to fit in writing long form stories around about a million other things.
It’s been a big step, I have to admit, because I’ve been hanging onto my very imperfect manuscript in the belief that it represents progress, when in reality it represents chaos. So, for the first time in a while, I’m actually looking forward to sitting down and returning to Amzharr once again.
The Wizard's Bookshelf 
Instead of binning it totally maybe index some of the ideas and especially paragraphs that you’re happy with. You don’t want to loss those.
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You’re right, there’s definitely some bits I’m going to salvage, but I’ve been amazed at how much I’ve managed to confuse and generally misdirect such a relatively small number of words over such a long period of going “let’s jut stick this bit here and see if its a better fit”! I rewrote the start of the third chapter this morning and feel so much better for it. Looking forward to adding to it for the first time in a while now.
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