It's my observation that starting a new book can be a heady and liberating experince. The blanks pages stretch like an unexplored country on a map. Except, it's better than that as I can form the terrain according to my taste and will.
That's how I felt when I started work on Weft. My previous book, Redeeming Blood, was a tightly confined work as it was a sequel to Without a City Wall. I still very much enjoyed writing Redeeming Blood but its narrative and chronology was tightly constrained by what had gone before.
Weft, by constrast, was a completely different experience in its initial stages. As it shared no characters or events with my previous two books I was utterly unshackled and could do whatever pleased me. What did surprise me was just how soon that book would start to form its own boundaries that had to be respected if the narrative arc were to be consistent and logical.
By the end of chapter 4, which would be about 20% of the way through the book if all goes to plan, my latitude to maneuver was already limited by the patterns of behaviour I had already established for my major characters.
So the moral of the story is: enjoy the liberty that the start of a new book affords because it doesn't last.
That's how I felt when I started work on Weft. My previous book, Redeeming Blood, was a tightly confined work as it was a sequel to Without a City Wall. I still very much enjoyed writing Redeeming Blood but its narrative and chronology was tightly constrained by what had gone before.
Weft, by constrast, was a completely different experience in its initial stages. As it shared no characters or events with my previous two books I was utterly unshackled and could do whatever pleased me. What did surprise me was just how soon that book would start to form its own boundaries that had to be respected if the narrative arc were to be consistent and logical.
By the end of chapter 4, which would be about 20% of the way through the book if all goes to plan, my latitude to maneuver was already limited by the patterns of behaviour I had already established for my major characters.
So the moral of the story is: enjoy the liberty that the start of a new book affords because it doesn't last.
