Currently I am in a place where I am tired, as I would call it, from editing. It’s not really burnout because I’m looking at the symptoms now and I don’t fit the bill. I think it might be fatigue from spending all this time and energy on one story.
At the moment with Feet or Fins I’m at a stage where I just want to get it over and done with. I have already chosen a cover image from iStockphoto.com and have been playing around with the watermarked picture on Pixlr.com.While I’m not really good at working out Photoshop in general I have developed some basic skills that I think will make my cover perfectly reasonable. I’ve sent off my documents to get an ITIN from the US and I expect that to arrive in the post in the middle of next month sometime. The moment I think everything is ready I’m putting it online so I can then go off and work on other things.
But during my hiatus I’ve been working on another story. A young adult one. Some time ago I did a complete word vomit and wrote about 14 short chapters. In the past two weeks I have edited those chapters and finished a book plan of it. And have decided that I will expand it into a trilogy. For some reason I think these books will be less ‘intensive’ in writing because I am drawing on real life instead of making up a somewhat supernatural world with multiple viewpoints. Feet or Fins has a lot of characters and POVs, plus a lot of back story and I have to make sure that the supernatural elements had a good sense of verisimilitude. For me young this young adult book seems to be easier to write. There is only one main character to focus on and it’s set in current society. Apart from this book I have been struck with the writing bug for two new stories and I am occasionally adding the occasional tid-bit to other stories as well.
My brain never stops ticking.
Stephanie Haggarty 