A New Approach

I decided I need a little motivation to keep moving things along. So, every week or two, I'm going to post the first one or two paragraphs from each chapter of The Mendel Chronicles.

Writing is...

...so much harder than I had imagined. OK. Not the act of actually putting pen to paper (I mean finger to keyboard) so much as finding the time to actually perform the act itself.

I have a new found appreciation for those of my acquaintances and friends who write, edit, revise, and publish their works either by themselves or in conjunction with a publisher.

That being said, I haven't forgotten the project; rather, I've had much going on lately, and not so much time to dedicate to my story line.

There will be an end. Somewhere. I just don't know where right now.

Lessons Learned

I think I might have finally learned the lesson that my college Computer Science professor was trying to teach. His mantra was

"Design, Design, Design!"

He proposed to us that an elegant design leads to an elegant solution, and a much easier time of implementing the solution. After "hacking out a solution" to the problem of what to write, I realized that I was trying to maintain story elements that had no bearing on the core plot. I also realized that the core plot didn't need to reveal all the details in the first few chapters, but cohesiveness could be gained throughout the book, by spreading details through the entirety of the text.

To make a long story short (not the book--just this post), I wrote an outline, and I've begun re-writing the book. I backtracked to what happened before the present text begins, and I'll integrate the existing text as necessary to complete my book.

I feel like this is going to be a much longer journey than I expected when I started.