Saturday, October 1, 2016

A Writer's Week #116: Charting a Course

This week was a busy one at work, so I did not accomplish as much as I'd hoped. Still, I managed to get a fair amount done in spite of it all. When I stopped work on The Deliverers 4 in mid-2014, I did so because I was feeling burned out writing-wise and stressed about life in general. As I look back on that time, I think one of the underlying reasons I decided to stop was that I just wasn't satisfied with where the fourth book was heading. The plot was a little one-dimensional and I just didn't have the energy to at the time to figure out exactly what was wrong, tear it down and rebuild it.

I never really totally let the book go, however. From time to time I'd pull out a printed copy of what I'd written and make a few changes here and there. I'd also catch myself turning over different ideas and alternatives in my head. Sometimes, a completely different idea for a book would pop into my head, but each time I'd discard it as either too much effort, or not good enough. All the time, Eric and his friends were in the back of my mind patiently waiting for me.


So here we are in Fall, 2016 and Eric and Stig have started nudging me (I guess they were getting impatient). So last weekend I fired up my laptop and discovered it needed 58 updates! As I said earlier, this week at work was really busy. I'm working on a big project with a high learning curve.

All the same, I managed to tackle some of my plot issues and work out an updated and improved story line. I still haven't figured out the ending, but I did plot out the majority of the book. I was also able to begin rewriting. While I haven't progressed very far in that regard, I've started and that's what counts.



My goal for the coming week is to continue to work on rewrites and to begin writing writing the rest of the book the following week. Once I get to that point, I'll start posting parts of the book here. Please feel free to provide feedback. As I said last week, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this book. I may go the full release route as I've done with the previous three, or I might just release it on Kindle, or maybe I'll just serialize it here. We'll see where this journey takes me. I hope you'll come along for the ride.

I'll see you next week. Peace.

Saturday, September 24, 2016

A Writer's Week #115: Shaking Off the Dust

Happy weekend everyone! Wow, I can't believe it's been over two years since my last blog post. Time sure does have a way of rushing by. It's been a good, if busy, two years, but all in all things have been good here. I hope you had a good couple of years as well.

When last I posted, I was working on book four in the Deliverers Series. Since then I've been busy working (new job with the same company), and watching the family grow. Christian is now a freshman in high school and Abby is in 7th grade and they're doing all sorts of thing from marching band to bowling leagues to Girl Scouts. Stephanie has been running races and is trying to run a race in all 169 towns in Connecticut (she's at 41 right now). Needless to say, things have been quite busy.

Periodically, I've entertained thoughts of getting back to my writing. I've struggled with the question of whether to finish Eric's story, or to venture out on a new path. After much internal debate, I've decided to continue Eric's journey through to the end. I'm not sure where that will lead, but right now completing his story is the goal.


I am currently in the process of reevaluating what I've written on book 4 so far. Once I've done that, I'll rewrite the parts that need to be and carry on. I don't know if I'll publish the remaining books in the series or not. I will definitely serialize them here and I may wind up publishing a Kindle version. We'll see how things go. I would dearly love and appreciate any feedback you could give as I post pieces of the story here. That would be a great help!

To kick off this next phase of my writing life, I'm making the kindle versions of books 2 & 3 available free on Amazon for the next few days. It's the first time I've made them available for free. Please download, read and write a review. Here is the link to my Amazon writer's page:

https://www.amazon.com/Gregory-S.-Slomba/e/B005PFPA64/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1

That's it for now. I'll be back with another update soon.