What is the book I’m trying to get published about?
The Worth of a Stone is the working title of a cozy fantasy I wrote last year. Immediately before, I had been writing the sequel to an earlier book and it was just not working out. I don’t know why I was struggling so much with that book, but I think it was because I was experimenting with how I prepped for books.
As a long time GM, I created large org documents so that I would have NPCs wherever my players ended going. I knew an overarching plot for each region.
The previous books I‘d written had some sort of foundational document. The Ring of Dain Thar Duin had one page for each chapter. The Rider had a text with a little paragraph for each chapter.
I didn’t do any of that with the sequel, just launching into the book.
That backfired dramatically.
Right from the start I struggled to do my daily writing and wasn’t interested in the story. As I wrote, I starting thinking about a new story, a DND campaign. I thought about scenes and plot beats.
Then, as I had the realization that in doing all this plotting, what I was really doing was writing a book. I wasn’t leaving space for other people to participate in this world, and it would be a pretty boring DND experience.
So I wrote the book, throwing the other one to the side. I created a master document that ended up being about seventeen pages. Whenever introduced a new character or aspect of the world, it went into the document.
I realize now that I said I was going to talk about the book and instead I wrote about how I wrote, not what I wrote. That’s the trouble with stream of consciousness writing.
Next time I will talk about the contents of the book.
Thanks for reading,
Michael
Michael Frutig 