Pause for triangulation

Been working hard on Book 3 of “The Inheritance Trilogy” for the past 7 weeks now, ever since I restarted it with a new PoV character. It’s really flowing — I just hit 75,000 words — which tells me that I’ve found the right voice for it at last. But because a) my outline for this book was written from a different character’s perspective, and b) I’ve been writing so fast I haven’t stopped to re-outline, I’m starting to stumble. It’s the same overall story — but because the different characters of this story do different things and travel in different directions for awhile, I’m stumbling in the dark.

So I figure now is a good time for a pause-and-readthrough. Which I’ll do this weekend.

What this means is that I’ll read the whole book from scratch. I’ll probably print it out to do this, since I haven’t yet broken down to buy an e-reader — kind of waiting for the dust to settle from the e-reader wars to see which one emerges triumphant, because I don’t like to buy new hardware every other year. Also because I like to make notes as I read (even when I read in the bath… which gets messy). But mostly, I’ll just gag my inner editor and try to read the story as if I haven’t written it (which is just as hard as it sounds), and see how it feels. I’ll fix the more obvious flaws, but leave the rest for after the 0th draft is finished. Then I’ll re-do the outline — mostly because I’m a Virgo and it scares me to travel without a map, even if I never actually consult the map. (I’ve been working essentially without an outline this far.) Then I’ll resume forward motion.

So, if I’m very quiet this weekend, you’ll know why!