Writing a Sequel
Photo by Thom Milkovic on Unsplash
As much as I love all of the courses I’m taking in my psychology major, there was a math course and surprise prerequisite course that threw me off of my creative journey. It took a lot of my energy, and unfortunately a lot of my attention away from finishing the outline of my WIP. But, I’m happy to announce that today is the first day I finished the outline for my second novel, Garland of Stars, the sequel to Dirge of Titans. So, I thought I’d write a blog post commemorating the day… and since it’s also the very first blog post I’ve ever written, I thought I’d do a bit of exposition on that as well.
I’ve always felt writing blogs to be something of an intimidating process. On one hand, it seems very, very easy. At least, that’s the impression I get by reading other authors posts, but on the other hand… how do authors decide what to write? Is it just an expanded check-in with the world, like a refined way of posting an Instagram reel? Or, is there a significant amount of thought put into writing a series of consistent, thematic posts that align with the author’s brand? Or… is it just about having fun, and not thinking about it too much? For someone like me, I think I’d prefer the latter, and maybe if I have enough to work with, all of the above. But, that’s what this post is for: a diegetic update for me to test the waters and see what comes out.
As for laying down the groundwork for Garland of Stars, there was a lot of layers and character-specific nuances I needed to work out before I went ham on Chapter 1. One of these pieces was making sure the characters’ internal conflict moved the story forward, and generally made sense by the end of the book. The second piece was adding all of the thematic layers, world building and making sure all the questions posed at the end of Dirge were answered, in some way. I’m also really excited to start sharing my work with my beta-readers again, and some of the feedback I’ve gotten has been instrumental in writing a better story!
Ultimately, I’m very excited to be engaged in something as wonderfully creative as writing a novel again. If the process is anything like how I wrote Dirge, it will be just as cathartic.
Tomorrow Sunday: I’ll endeavour to write a more engaging blog post. :)
