After a year and a half of writing and working on the front covers, I’m around halfway through my seven-book series, The Book of Dungeons. With 50,000 words into my fourth book, I’m happy to say I’m still writing at 2,000 words/day seven days a week. I’m still in love with my characters and story. At the end of most afternoons, I’m very pleased with the day’s progress. For the nonwriters out there, it’s a big deal that I’m still geeking out over this stuff. As Harlan Ellison used to say, The trick isn’t becoming a writer, it’s staying one.
Some mornings I approach the keyboard with trepidation and angst, not knowing how I’ll move the story forward, but this is as close to writers’ block that I come. After a half-hour of puttering around, I get moving. Today I nearly pounded out 2,600 words–which makes up for the lousy 1,500-word-day yesterday. I love writing.
Not all is sanguine on the work front, I’m afraid. After enough time away from the cover, I’m looking at it with fresh eyes, and I’m not loving it anymore. The Celtic scrollwork looks great when zoomed in, but it isn’t readable in thumbnail form. I’ve come to the same conclusion for The Book of Kells’ Chi Rho page, my cover’s inspiration, so it’s small comfort to know it’s not just me. I’m planning to do a third rework. The first version of the cover took three months to create. The second version took half that amount. I’m expecting this third iteration to gobble even more time. Sigh.