Book 2 Progress Update

That was a sneaky little excerpt from my “zero” draft of The Divine Archive #2.

I’m so glad to be back in the playful drafting stage. After being in the editing trenches for years, it’s a breath of fresh air to be writing something new! 

Now through July are dedicated to digging into my sequel. If I can get my whole draft done by the time I get Blood of the Gods’ edits back, that’d be fantastic—but more realistically, I’d just love to get as much done as I can.

TDA #2 is a fun one. It’s got so much misery and intrigue. Oh, how I wish I could gush about this in more detail, but alas! Book one isn’t even out yet, haha! However, I can chat a bit about my process.

Right now, I’m on the draft number I call “draft 0.2.” It’s still under the umbrella category of a zero draft, but it’s gone through many iterations on its own. I started off by hand-writing “draft 0.0” in a notebook (I’d purchased three, thinking I’d hand-write the whole first draft, but I only ever filled one). Hand-writing this gave me the opportunity to get something rough on paper without feeling compelled to rewrite the beginning seventeen distinct times, as I am prone to do. It was helpful, but I quickly realized I needed to shift gears.

That brought me to draft 0.1, which was written digitally, in which I 1) typed out the hand-written text, and 2) made the revisions I thought I needed. But something didn’t strike me as right in that draft, either, so I set it, too, aside.

I needed an outline.

Now, I consider myself a “pantser,” a “gardener,” a “discovery writer.” Whatever you want to call it. Essentially, what that boils down to is: I prefer to write without a plan and let the story take a life of its own as I go. It leads to more work in the postproduction stage, to use a video production term, but it lets me be a bit looser in the writing stage. More playful. I can try things out, and sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t. And often, plot points come to me in such a random and unexpected way. Planning things tends to remove that playfulness for me.

This book is the first major project I’ve outlined in a substantial way. Well, sort of. When I started draft 0.2, I outlined about eleven chapters—and once I started writing, I deviated from that outline by chapter five. Regardless, though, that outline was not wasted work. This book has a subgenre I’m less familiar with, and as a result I wanted to work through my thoughts before they landed on the actual page.

So, that outline bit the dust, but I’m in a better place for it.

I’ve been really enjoying the walks I take during my lunch breaks. The weather’s been nice, so most days I’ll put on some music and go as far as I dare on local trails in the time I have allotted. Long walks have always been my primary method of idea generation—it gives me ample time and brain space to zone out and envision what kinds of things my characters might be up to as the plot progresses.

And let me tell you. The kinds of things I’ve come up with are leaving me jittery with excitement.

I wish I could talk more in depth about book 2, but I literally can’t, because EVERYTHING hinges on the finale of book one. Finding an excerpt to share at the top of this newsletter was near impossible! But I’m stubborn, and I love to tease things, when I can. 

Here are some statistics:

Catch ya next time!

Wren Rivers

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