Let me put everything up front, on the table, honest with people. Because there’s no reason to keep secrets from the people who go out of their way to read what I have to say.
I’m doing a really horrible job of getting the next novel written.
And it’s not like I don’t have the time. Sure, I work and then do homework for classes, but once that’s done I still have about 4 or 5 hours left in my day. And what do I do with it? Play video games, usually. Sometimes watch some TV. Go out with some friends.
This is much preferable to facing the ugliness that is Book Two. People who go through NaNoWriMo know that the halfway point of the novel is always the toughest part. And considering that this is part of a planned trilogy… guess what? Book Two is the halfway point.
So I’m struggling. Not that this is news. But the truth is that I’m struggling for no reason at all. I just don’t want to do it. I don’t want to face the fact that all my characters are in different places doing different things and none of them, none of them fully catch my interest anymore. Even though everyone’s struggling to survive and to save all of existence from collapsing, I can’t seem to make that into real content.
I could probably write the whole story in 10 chapters, but I know that it has to be over 40 because every chapter I write is short. I can’t function any other way. People don’t want a tiny little book when even the higher goal, 44,000 words, is really not a long story to begin with.
But progress has to be made. So, in that light, I think it’s time to use the skipping trick. I’ve truthfully never actually done this before. I’m referring to the part where you go to write a chapter much later on that currently has your interest. I don’t know h0w this will work out, and it probably will call for more editing than I would have liked, but… can you really expect me to do it right the first time?
Of course not. You can only expect me to get it done. And so, hopefully, I will.
site has moved 
I’ve been playing more video games than I should lately, too.d
Then again I haven’t gotten started on the real editing of my second novel.
I once did the skipping trick for a really crap novel of mine, and I hated it. Now I just do outlines, which help me determine what the purpose of each chapter and scene is. Sure, I’ll sometimes deviate from the outline, like adding in a new scene, or shaping the chapter differently, but for the most part, my book does follow that outline and it makes revisions less messy.
I know exactly what you mean! I didn’t have an outline for previous books, but I do have one for this. I think that makes it all the more frustrating sometimes, when I realize that one chapter I had planned just can’t quite stand. Of course, it’s because of the outline that I can make myself skip at all–otherwise I’d be afraid to lose my place along the way.