Currently Writing: MOTHS

Title: MOTHS (placeholder)
Date Started: Oct. 18, 2020
Status: Work in Progress (20k/100k) – Draft #5

Genre: Adult dark academia fantasy
Pitch: A viciously ambitious entomologist investigates the murder of the immortal Petronelle Flamel at a prestigious school for alchemists in Paris.

_

July 17, 2023
I hit a bit of a wall in the fourth/fifth ‘act’ (the book is split into parts) of Moths after the 24 hour novel challenge, so I went back and started revising. I had a ton of ideas in regards to the worldbuilding, which I had left pretty sparse at the beginning, so most of my editing was supposed to be limited to those pesky little world details.

Well. WELL. I got a bit carried away and now the whole book is starting to look different. It’s definitely better, though—richer world and characters, a more complex plot, clearer stakes—it’s just frustrating to feel like I’m moving backwards. I now have to basically relay my foundation so I can write the remainder of the book, but I’m fully rewriting multiple chapters and this book is starting to feel like my own Herculean labor. But I want the book to be the best I can make it!

I’ve been refueling my creative well by reading short stories whenever I can. If I’m being honest, the novels I’ve been reading lately haven’t been all that inspiring, but I hope I can crack my streak of 2- and 3- star books soon. I also started watching Breaking Bad for the first time last week (mistake), but it’s a masterclass in tension and I simply can’t stop.

June 28, 2023
I’ve finally hit 45,000 words in this manuscript! The conflict has escalated quite a bit—I want to go back and edit for scene flow and just beef up the individual scenes in general in order to make them more engaging—I usually fall back on the same set pieces and types of scenes again and again, and I want to dig in order to create more variety. Last week, I took on the 24 hour novel challenge and was able to add 18k to this manuscript in the span of 2 days. Unfortunately, this burned me out significantly and I haven’t written much since. We’re trying to turn that around this week!

June 4, 2023
Yesterday I completely scrapped most of my original opening in order to get ‘straight to the point,’ since there’s already quite a bit of lead-up to the inciting incident. It does feel a little lighter, but I’m not sure if I’ll maintain the changes since the original opening was chockfull of important symbolism.
I’ve also run into a consistent issue, which is that I use characters bursting onto a scene and interrupting an ongoing conversation or event to lead into the next important scene, which diminishes tension and causes the main character to lose agency. I have been focusing heavily on writing characters who drive their own story forward (as exemplified by this video I recently made on the Three C’s of character-driven storytelling), and I definitely want to push these characters and this story even further in that direction.
All that being said, writing is going well! I have a few days off from work and am trying to escape some unpleasant life events/realities right now, which means my creativity is quite ripe.

May 30, 2023
I’ll be recording my progress on MOTHS in this blog post from here on out. Currently just over 20k words, which has historically been my ‘hump’—now that I’m past this milestone, in which Act I is more or less complete and all the stones of the plot have been set in motion, the rest of the story simply breathes easier. I always struggle with that first part of Act 2, when the story isn’t in full gear but you’re not actively introducing new concepts or characters every few seconds. I think the trick is the let the inciting incident breathe, and to focus more on the characters’ internal state at this point, while still trying to have “things happen” in the plot. Excited to continue writing!