It’s been some time since I’ve posted anything here, so I’ll try to round up an update here.

Reading-wise, I’m currently deep in two books :

• The Way of Kings by B. Sanderson (Reading at home, since this one is too heavy to carry around). Expect a full review on this wonderful book this week.
• The Name of the Wind by P. Rothfuss (Reading during commutes). Another very good book. I’m about halfway through this one, so I should be done in under two weeks.

I’m waiting to hear from my short story (jury was supposed to be done on october 8th, results to be sent before october 22nd. I’m not expecting anything on this front, but it would be very cool indeed if it obtained any of the 8 prizes.

I also am planning to go to the Utopiales con in Nantes between november 10th and november 14th. I’m shamelessly using Brandon Sanderson’s appearance here to schedule my first con. The organizing committee seems a little slow, since they haven’t gotten out the schedule yet. I’m waiting on this schedule to know if I should be there during the whole con or only the first days.

Now, to the novel’s advancement.

Just to remind you of the situation, this is a mystery set in a fantasy setting that I originally planned to outline, to get the feel of this type of writing. After much trouble, I decided at the end of august to give in and discovery write this one.

So, where am I after a little over a month of writing this one?

First, it’s difficult for me to write while I’m on vacation. I need a specific mood to get into writing, and I usually get that mood at night after 10pm, whenI’m done with my daily routine. It turns out that while I’m on vacation, my daily routine changes, and the mood doesn’t come that easily. Add to this that my writing setup is quite unconfortable when I’m on vacation, and that I have someone sitting next to me making noise and talking to me, and you have poor writing results there. I probably wrote about one fifth of that I should have written during those three weeks, and the quality of writing wasn’t that good.

Second, I’m discovery-writing a mystery. As I didn’t have a good idea inside my head about the characters voices, I’m still discovering those as I write. The main character for instance that I had originally designed to be the trickster turns out to be a very quiet character. I’m beginning to feel his motivations. This means slow writing, and writing pieces that I will probably have to throw away, since they’re only useful to the writing process and not the story. Will I be able to throw those away? (As I often said : that’s a lot of work to throw out) I hope so, but nothing is certain when it comes to me and editing.

I had some happy surprises, including a side character that is becoming my third main character. I feel like I have a lot to write about that one. Another nice surprise was an unexpected scene full of tension. It might need some rewriting, but I’m quite impressed that this scene got out of my fingers when I never planned for it.  It feels like one of the scenes in the first book that I never anticipated and that turned out to be one of the focal moments of the novel.

So, yes, the second novel goes slowly, and in the 16 000 words written, I didn’t get very far yet in the plot. I have plenty of things to write left, that’s reassuring.