Moving Forward

While I make no promises whatsoever as to an earlier-than-planned release date for The White Thread, I find myself incapable of NOT moving forward at this point. The thing that's got the fire lit under me? It is (of all things) the desire to start my next fantasy series before another four years have passed. Christmas break is a great time for quiet contemplation (when the children are asleep, that is) and my contemplation has largely centered on new story ideas. I already have about ten series on the back burner from before I ever started The Gateway Chronicles, but I keep coming up with new ideas! (One of which I have particularly fallen in love with, to the point that I even pulled out a pen and paper and sketched my main characters - something I have not done since college). Anyhow, as much as I may love my new idea, I have absolutely no intentions of doing any real work on it until The Gateway Chronicles is complete. SO, I sat down and started going through my White Thread notes and began a very early-stage outline. I named and outlined the first 6 chapters tonight, but my brain won't cooperate! It keeps jumping ahead to much-anticipated scenes, some of which are not even in this installment. So once again I am convicted that I must make every moment of my books as arresting as those scenes that I am just dying to write and share with my audience. And as I get further on this endeavor, I also have more details to juggle in my mind. My notes are already copious, with the promise of more to come, and I think I need a new system of organizing them so that I don't leave anything crucial out of the story. And THIS is why I usually save this process for the summer... Well, we'll see what I get done over Christmas break and whether or not any of it makes the final cut come summertime.