Book two is coming along, quite nicely!
It’s strange to think that I’m actually already writing book two in The Moon Magic Chronicles. I *had* always intended it to be a series, but after spending so long on The Witch Laws, I didn’t actually expect to be at this point.
I didn’t start writing The Witch Laws until 2018, and at that point, I was merely drafting an outline. I was character building, making sure that I knew my characters inside out, drawing family trees, and drawing maps. Maps of the world that my series takes part in, maps of Seren’s cottage, maps of the Government Building. It was a long process, and then finally, in 2019, I felt able to start long hand drafting the (at the time untitled) first instalment. I knew the entire series would be called The Moon Magic Chronicles, but I didn’t know the name of the individual books. Not until I had pretty much finished writing it.. And that wasn’t until January 2022.
Obviously, we all know what happened between the autumn of 2019 and now. The entire world went into Lockdown. And, although many people may think that this is a writer’ s dream, for me it wasn’t. My children were being home schooled, which was a challenge in itself. They both found doing schoolwork ad-hoc, without any structure incredibly difficult and it varied between non at all and not much. The first hall of 2020 saw me stop writing entirely as my time was spent trying to cajole a teenager and a pre-teen from their bedrooms and non-school work screens.
I also love to write in cafés. It enables me to focus better than when I’m at home. People watching inspires me, picking up snippets of their lives as they walk past can help me scramble around a particularly difficult scenario that I’m writing. Obviously, in 2020, that became an impossibility – even if cafés were open, they weren’t open for people to sit in and write all day. I tried to write when at home at that point, but found that the distraction of the kids being home constantly, my husband and the cats were not compatible. At least, not then.
By the end of 2020, things got worse for me. I somehow broke my back by falling down one step. With hospitals barely coping with Covid-19, I didn’t get an x-ray for over six weeks, and found out the prognosis on Christmas Eve. I could barely move – my traditional job of bedecking the Christmas Tree went to the kids, and cooking Christmas Dinner was the husbands job – with the little help I could offer which consisted of me sat in the kitchen barking instructions. I was in so much pain, and my pain killers made me dozy and even more scatterbrained than usual. Writing was not even on the table. An absolute impossibility.
As the world began to recover in 2021, so did I. I slowly began to get my head back together, and was finding myself with itchy fingers. Then I got the dreaded Covid, and back to square one I went. It wasn’t until May that I finally opened up my laptop again, and started to transfer my scribbled chapters from 2019 to the screen. We moved the living room around, giving me a small office space at the back of the room – cut off from the TV by a book case. With the kids back in school, I found I could spend more and more time sat at the desk, and before long, I’d finished typing up my hand written chapters. I floundered for a time, unsure as to where to go from there. Should I hand draft the rest, or should I just type on the computer? My writers block had returned and I did virtually nothing.
It was around then that I joined Helen Scheuerer’s Patreon. I still stand by this being the best thing I’ve ever done, as the advice she offered me was beyond priceless. She helped me with exercises to overcome the plague that my Writer’s Block had become. I began to write in 15-30 minute intervals, and slowly, the book was gaining momentum. I started asking on Facebook if any of my friends fancied becoming Beta Readers, and by December, I’d amassed a lovely group. It was when one of them emailed me in mid- December, thinking I’d sent the manuscript, that I realised I should probably get a shuffle on.
Once Christmas was out of the way, I settled down and begin writing in earnest. I vowed to get half a chapter a day drafted, determined to finish the thing that was getting louder inside my head. Somehow, the words flew out; my fingers dancing across the keyboard like a composer’s fly across a piano. Instead of creating a concerto of sweeping music, it felt as though I was composing a symphony of words. I’d take regular breaks, but would still often be finishing off chapters late at night if a thought popped into my head. I ended up completing a chapter each day, somehow. Until finally at the beginning of February, three days before my daughter’s 16th birthday, I finished.
So, you can kind of see why I’m so shocked that I’m currently about to start on chapter 20 of book 2. Some 45,000 words in. It wasn’t until my mad dash of bashing out a chapter a day that I was at this point with The Witch Laws.. Admittedly, book 2 is looking like it’s going to be a little bit longer, but that’s the case with most series; the word count increases as the series goes on. But still – I’m gob-smacked that even with so much going on, I’ve been able to focus enough to write so much in just three months. It could be the confidence that the few people who have read The Witch Laws have enjoyed it and want to know what happens to the characters. It could be the knowledge that now one book is complete, it’s a bit easier to bash out another. Who knows? I’m just glad I’m able to do this, that my family support me and leave me in my bubble to write.
Sall.