Jamie Broker

My current primary WIP started with a little idea about a man with a faerie curse, and a snippet of a scene — almost unrecognizable from its current form! — in a Google Doc. From there, it grew into something over 100,000 words long, but one of the things that helped me as I fumbled my way along this journey was that I always knew, even roughly, where it would end. While it’s still undergoing edits, the overarching idea and form have always been fairly reliable.

Not so my second WIP.

Oh no. This bad boy started with a knock-down, drag-out brawl between two faerie princesses (sadly, I had to cut that) and went through two excruciating attempts at an outline (trashed both of those) with stop-and-go chapters (all gone, though some ideas from those are still floating around) on three different platforms (4theWords, StoryForge, and plain ol’ Google Docs). Now, we’re on Outline/Alpha Draft 3.0, and I’m hopeful that this might finally be the one that sticks.

Now if there’s one thing that comforts me, it’s that draft-wrangling is a common occurrence for a great many authors (at least, to hear Author Threads tell it). And I already wrote one book; if I’m patient and persistent, I can certainly write another one. It’s been a very interesting experience, though, to find that Book Baby #1 and Book Baby #2 have such different personalities. I’m excited to see how both of them grow.