An Indie author at the forefront of my current work in progress, I spent the past two weeks proofing, editing, tweaking, fleshing, meshing, and messing around with my document. Heh heh—without advancing the story a single word, my future novel in the genre of Contemporary miraculously progressed from chapter 7 to 10 as a result of subdividing chapters.

A “pantser” who pivots solely from ideas ricocheting in my mind without a written outline or compendium of notes, the story has already grown in scope and depth through unforeseen twists and turns.

Shiver me timbers, there’s a draft coming from a blank page!

No longer giving the fabrication process of writing the bum’s rush, it’s been draft-y in my office as I compose chapter 10 beyond typing it as such in the document.

Typically during each daily writing session of 1-2 hours, I progress with the speed of a glacier. I advance. I retreat to either: research, use the thesaurus to find a lesser-used, suitable synonym, or monitor my word flow. Some would argue to draft and be damned, so as not to disrupt the momentum. That’s not how I roll. For me, each sentence is predicated on its predecessor as I weave my story.

Better to word build by taking great pains, rather than demolishing a shoddy setup, only to start over again, eh?

I may have only written 131 words in the first 2-hr.session of drafting chapter 10, but it’s a solid foundation for adding on. Rereading it will fire me up to fabricate what will logically follow.

Adhering to the principles of an indie author to the nth degree, I don’t set word quotas or publication deadlines at the risk of compromising my work, of which I’m very proprietary. It might be several more months to a year or more before this baby is road ready for publication. Whenever—you can be sure this diamond in the rough will be polished to a high sheen. That’s the cold, hard truth!