It’s taken me nearly three months, but I am proud to say that the latest draft of this novel has been submitted to the editor.

If you recall, during the spring 2017 I was invited into the first Cohort for Inkshares novel production. Part of that process was looking at the story from the bones up, and during all the work I did for the cohort I realized that the current title of the book doesn’t really fit what it’s become.

Initially this was a graphic novel, a sort of retooling of Akira except with mechs. As I continued to write, the story morphed into something deeper, an exploration of what it means to treat technology as a sort of religion, and what would happen should it actually become one. As such, Isidore’s journey became much more tightly focused on her relationship with the Church of Technology. And the title of the novel, one that used to be about this fun sort of sci-fi romp, didn’t make sense anymore for her story.  

As I wrote this latest draft (number 4), I started thinking about the title and if it still served the story. I came to the realization that it did not. Therefore, I’ve decided to change the title of this book. Without further ado, I would like to introduce you to the new title: Sister of the Circuit. As soon as I made the commitment to the new title, I got super excited about how it connects to the themes of the current iteration of the novel.

Now I step back in the editing queue to wait my turn to see what Inkshares thinks of the book. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous. I’m going to pass the time working on another project to give myself some space from Circuit.

One third of the way through NaNoWriMo and I’ve come to a revelation about myself: I don’t like editing.

It’s a whole different world from writing, and trying to pick apart a story you’ve written already and piece it back together in a way that works better is a phenomenally headache-inducing process. It’s necessary, and the results of the process will speak for themselves in the end, but gosh is it exhausting.

I wish I could say I’ve made a lot of progress on Tantalus Depths already, but it’s been very slow going. Most of the editing I’ve done so far has been in the form of outlining rewrites on problem scenes and trying to boil the entire story down to specific thematic elements so I can increase the consistency in theme and tone throughout. It’s slow but crucial work, and hopefully it’ll make the remainder of the process move much more smoothly.

To keep myself creatively inspired while working through the frustrating and tiresome work of editing, I’ve been doing a decent amount of work writing Proteus as well. Since the beginning of NaNoWriMo, I’ve managed to work through about a bit over a dozen pages in Proteus, and about two full chapters. I’m definitely not up to the recommended word count for NaNoWriMo, but since I’m dividing my attention between writing and editing, I feel like it’s a fair bit of progress.

My plan is to try and get the first half of Tantalus Depths edited by the 20th of the month, finishing it by the end of November. Somewhere in there I’d like to knock out another half-dozen chapters of Proteus if possible, but that remains a secondary priority.

Hopefully my next update will be an encouraging one. Back to work I go!