As I mentioned in my October update, November got off to a slow start, with my first week being largely committed to an iRacing event with teammates. I actually started writing on the eight of November.

My project for this month was still the rewrite of The Shadow of the Ruin (for which I am still considering a name change). I completed 5 chapters, for a total of 20,033 words. Length compared to the previous draft was 1,924 words shorter over those five chapters. That’s not keeping up with my target of trimming 30,000+ words, but I expect to pick up more later where there are some larger cuts.

Needless to say, that’s not quite meeting my target of two chapters a week or eight chapters a month. I’m still making my way through the fairly slow buildup of the story, a section that includes long chapters (which I can’t always write in one sitting) and more extensive edits than some later sections.

I hope to speed up once I get into the middle of the story, but if not I will have to revise my target for the completed rewrite to somewhere in the second quarter of 2022. At my current pace of five chapters per month, it will take me seven (!) more months to complete the rewrite of all forty-five chapters. Obviously, I need to up that speed at some point…

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In other blog news, I have plans to begin a new section where I react to movies, TV, and books that I’m currently reading. I don’t intend for this to be a ‘review’ as such — just my thoughts from a creative perspective, things I like, things I would do differently, that sort of thing.

My inspiration for the section, and the first installment in my planned series, is Amazon’s new Wheel of Time show. I grew up with WoT; it was the first fantasy series I selected for myself to read, and I faithfully followed every new book (even when nothing was happening) all the way to the end.

I plan to have my first post on the series up some time this weekend, after the latest episode (which will be Episode Six as of the time of writing) is released.