Tag: WIP (Page 1 of 2)

Three-quarter view of a worn old desk with an old-fashioned inkwell containing a ragged crow quill. Papers are stacked on the desk to the right of frame.

[tap, tap] Is this thing on?

08/11/2026 / Ellie / 0 Comments

Well. It’s been a minute, hasn’t it?

They say time flies when you’re having fun, and it’s certainly been flying around here. How the heck is it November already?

As to the “having fun” part, well, yes I have been, actually. Writing-wise I’ve been on a bit of a tear lately. Made some progress, despite my brain’s attempts to sabotage me, and all the disability-related embuggerances I have to put up with day-to-day. So since some of you have been asking, here’s an update on the Work In Progress.

The Dragon House

The manuscript itself is sitting at around 212k. There’s some fat still to trim, a couple more darlings to slay, and parts of the final act to put in place, so that’s not it’s final length, but expect a chunky book. It will be bigger than its predecessors, but that’s typical of a series-ender, as I’ve said before. There’s lots of moving parts to bring to an orderly stop, and of course a bazillion opportunities for me to trip myself up along the way.

But it continues to become more and more book-shaped as time goes on. Yes, I’m still writing. No, I still can’t say when it will be done, but just so we’re clear, IT WILL BE DONE, and enpublicated, if I have to film myself reading it aloud on YouTube* to do it.

The (not-so) Sekrit Projekt

I know it’s taking me an embarrassingly long time to finish the Wild Hunt Quartet, so I totally get that I should not be thinking about new projects, but writers’ brains being what they are** I didn’t have much choice about it.

I’ve talked before about some spin-off novella ideas that have been percolating. There’s some very, VERY early stuff I wrote about Gair’s adoptive family that was pruned from the main story for reasons of space/relevance/pacing that I thought might make an interesting coda to the series, so I kept it. This is the basis of novella idea 1.

I also have a favourite character I’ve always wished I could have done more with, but there wasn’t room in Gair’s story to tell theirs as well. Enter novella idea 2.

The third novella concept concerns reckoning with the past while trying to find a way to move forward into a new life after your old one ends.

There’s a couple more ideas brewing as well, about historical events that are foundational to the Quartet as a whole, which I think might stretch the old writing muscles a bit.

So, five ideas. I’m being cagey with the details because spoilers, obviously, but also because this is the first time I’m putting these ideas out there as A Thing I Want To Do when the current Thing is finished. Something about them just made my brain go *ping*.

So what am I going to do with them?

Honest answer? I don’t know yet. I don’t even know if Wild Hunt novellas are something readers will want. All of them will round out the world and the reading experience, but none of them are critical to enjoying the Quartet as it stands (or will stand, or . . . you know what I mean). They’d be like bonus content or side quests. They’re not contracted works, I haven’t discussed them with my agent or publisher and I will not be touching *any* of them until TDH is buttoned up and delivered because that is my absolute priority.

But I have created a directory structure for them on my laptop, with the titles and a 2-3 line synopsis for each, because these stories were *clamouring* to be heard (see above re: writers’ brains). I had to write them down somewhere just to get them out of my head.

So. This is where I’m at. Apologies for the radio silence, but y’know. I’ve got a book to finish.

Featured image by Pexels on Pixabay

***

*and nobody wants to see that, trust me

**”SQUIRREL!”

A pair of spectacles and a fountain pen on a laptop keyboard.

Work in progress

27/11/2022 / Ellie

I’ve been keeping my head (mostly) down on how things are going with The Dragon House. I didn’t want to jinx the progress I’ve been making by crowing out loud. As the old hands among you may remember, it took me years to admit to another human being that yes, I was writing a book, so this tracks, as they say.

A few things have fallen into place with TDH lately. Some of them have been to do with plot, and some have been to do with process, and quite a lot were just to do with me being in a better headspace.

I’d been struggling to achieve what I wanted within the constraints of what my Editor!Brain thought I “should” be doing. According to Editor!Brain I had far too many PoV characters. I was confusing matters with sub-plots. This is the final book in the series, E!B reminded me constantly. I should be bringing it all together by now, dammit! These anxieties were setting my brain hamster-wheeling into the wee small hours.

some of my disquiet was rooted in knowing that these supplementary viewpoints needed to be given voice

It’s never good when I start obsessing over craft instead of, y’know, crafting. The quality and quantity of my output always suffers (ah, overwriting, my old friend). But in the end, I remembered who was supposed to be in charge around here, and told Editor!Brain to take a hike. This was indeed the last book in the series, it was already doing a shit-ton of heavy lifting and therefore the only rule that should apply was the Rule of Cool.

I gave myself permission to add another PoV (justifying it to E!B by re-using bit part characters from the previous book) and you know what? It was freeing. It unlocked something in the narrative and allowed me to play more with a subtle theme that’s been threading through the Wild Hunt Quartet from the start: stories. Specifically, the stories we tell ourselves, and the fuzzy bit at the intersection of history and legend, truth and what we want to be true. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it justice but I’m having fun with it nonetheless.

So much fun, in fact, that I brought back a second minor character as a new PoV. That unlocked a sub-plot that had been left to wither for a book and a half, instantly giving TDH more depth and heft. It feels marvellous. I think some of my disquiet was rooted in knowing that these supplementary viewpoints needed to be given voice in order to add texture and dimension to the whole, and I was struggling to go forward creatively because Story!Brain knew I was missing a step.

It’s never good when I start obsessing over craft instead of, y’know, crafting.

In the process of writing this up I discovered I had accidentally created a trans-dimensional teahouse. Characters went in its front door in Zhiman-dar and later, other characters sneaked through its back yard in El Maqqam, 160 miles away. Whilst this is actually a continuity error in the book that I need to fix, there is a part of me that really wishes I could have made it work in-world, because the wandering shop trope will never not give me hearteyes.

Anyway. All this has brought the wordcount rocking up to

:drumroll:

173k.

Now before anyone gets too excited, this does not mean I’m done. 173k is not even close to where I expect the final wordcount to be (somewhere north of 200k, most likely). But I am getting there. There’s still some fat to trim, and the final part needs the most work.

Oh, yeah, I didn’t tell you that, did I? It’s structured in parts now. It felt like the best way to handle multiple locations, lots of point of view characters, and all the normal/slow/extra-slow time shenanigans, by treating each group/location as a separate arc. Regular readers of this blog will know I tried that arrangement once before and it didn’t work; this time round I think I have sufficient narrative glue to hold it together. We shall see.

After all, there’s a reason these things are called a work in progress.