Last week was a write-off, thanks to some wholly unexpected animal drama. Our family decided to adopt a dog from a rescue shelter nearby. To boil down the entire fiasco into a single sentence: “The dog wasn’t a good fit for our family.” I feel we are mostly recovered from the experience, and towards that end I am back on revising duty.

Which finds me at an interesting point. Writer’s block.

That’s right. Writer’s block. I rarely ever get writer’s block, thanks to my anal-retentive outlining process. But why am I writing in the first place? Ought I not be in the midst of revision? Isn’t revision a process of editing, removing, tightening up, and tying off loose threads?

Largely, yes. However, for my current project, Omnipotence, I’m finding that I’m doing a lot of new content creation. This is due to the fact that I wrote Omnipotence BIG. Five points of view big, to be exact. I knew I would cut an appreciable amount of word count from the first draft, but as I worked through a few fundamental story questions, it occurred to me…

I’m trying to cram a trilogy into one novel.

So after a conversation with my wife, I’ve decided to break apart my original draft into two novels, and then flesh out what was a lacking third act into a third novel. For Omnipotence, this means I’m boiling down the POV count from five to three.

Which also means I need to flesh out the under-realized characters. Hence the new content creation. I find myself currently jack-knifed on the revision highway, holding up creative traffic as I try to pull myself right way forward. I’d like to complain about this, but truth be told, this is kind of fun!

However, I have other projects waiting. The Curse Merchant wants revision, and my next project, a western horror, won’t linger in the darkness for long before it demands attention. So, here’s to muses in tow trucks and a free-flowing creative pipeline!