Head, Meet WallPOSTED JUL 16, 2011

As novel #1 enters the home stretch to publication, novel #2 is still making its slow journey toward "becoming a thing." The Day The Rain Came Back (DRCB) is an almost two year-old project now and it hasn't progressed like I'd hoped. The first storyline I developed didn't pan out, and the second entered the writing stage but stalled. Throwing some vacation time at it this week was supposed to get DRCB back into gear, but I ended up stamping "meh" on what I had so far and declaring it unworkable.

I should really stick to using my vacation time for road trips.

Very little has been released about DRCB and I felt like writing this update so everyone would know that it's still in progress. I'm still enthusiastic about the core concepts, the original ideas, behind the book and that I can glorify God with writing. But... I'm also not interested in writing mediocre work (people write enough of that already), and I've decided that I'd rather write 5 novels I can be proud of in my lifetime than 50 lukeworm, forgettable ones, even if money or publicity favors the latter.

So the bulk of my vacation went to answering a pressing question: "Why was Caffeine such a smooth process and DRCB so rough?" The answer I arrived at was that Caffeine started with a core idea (computer virus seeks meaning of life, captures human as a way to get answer), which every element of the story tied directly or indirectly back to. DRCB on the other hand did not have a unifying concept. I created a setting and decided what would happen in it, over-engineering the story if you will. The result was a story that didn't really come off the page, that wasn't real. I looked for what could be DRCB's unifying concept and re-envisioned the story from there, finding a completely different novel emerge... another sign that I'd been writing myself into a dead-end before.

Tomorrow I'll be typing the third outline, which so far resembles the feel Caffeine's had at this early stage (considering how Caffeine ended up, this is good). I consider all this a reminder that I'm still learning how to write, and that learning is a lifelong process.

Lord willing, I'll have a second work to roll out as Caffeine reaches its peak. Just as before, I intend to write the best work I can... work that leaves an impact on the reader.

Follow along on the yet-undeveloped The Day The Rain Came Back page .

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