I’m ten pages to the end of Book two of the Tempest. Last year was an incredibly productive year, but this year has been lost to rewrites. It’s a different kind of creativity. Rather than limitless possibilities where I could throw in a frost giant or two if I got bored, I had to make what was actually on the page be as interesting as possible.

Before I started selling stuff, I didn’t really put much energy into the rewrite process. I got some great critiques, but if it wasn’t glowing, I wasn’t great at taking constructive criticism. 

I didn’t really start selling until I moved away and had to leave my writing group, so I lost the constant feedback. My writing evolved. Someone had told me once, “There is no description, there is only POV” and I realized that there is nothing but point of view. Filtering everything through your main character’s point of view changed everything for me. 

But it basically made editing impossible. When the POV changes on the rewrite, it means that everything has to change from the sentence level. Editing becomes rewriting.

I usually feel a little depressed coming to the end of the story, but No Mortal Business is book two of three. Middlehill takes place over the course of two and a half years over the first four books. The Tempest from Book one to book three takes place over two weeks. Each story has a clear beginning, middle and end, but I don’t have to feel sad that I’m leaving the world. Book three is waiting in my hard drive.