How To Recognize When To Kill Your Darlings

Chapters Completed: 21

Chapters In Progress: 6

Chapters Not Started: 7

“Chronicling The Craft” is an article series where I share my experience with writing my current work-in-progress (WIP), which is a fantasy novel. Every 5,000 words, I let readers know what I’ve accomplished since the previous article and share advice, discoveries, techniques, etc. Besides the word count in each article title, a “chapter ticker” at the top also tracks my progress as I use the skip-around / “writercopter” method to write the novel. Today’s installment celebrates the book reaching 85,000 words in length.

After seeing my October schedule fill up, I took advantage of whatever free time I had in September to write, write, write. In some ways it was easy, since not much was going on offline. In other ways, however, it wasn’t. One weekend in particular left me ready to yank out my hair. Between an important bit of world-building I’d previously overlooked and revising a scene I’d previously written because its tone (not so much the content) needed to change, progress slowed to a crawl for two sessions. But that’s behind me now. It’s time to celebrate the new milestone – and then get back to work!

So, what’s happened with the WIP since the previous Chronicle? Continue reading →