At this point I’ve been working on A House Divided, book 2 in my series for about seven or eight years.

That is a longer time than I would like to think about, especially since House Valerius was done in three. You’d think that getting started would be more difficult than keeping going but somehow that doesn’t seem to have been the case.

It’s not like I want to stop. I enjoy writing (when I can get myself going) and I still have ideas of where I want to go. I know, in fact have even written bits and pieces to go into another book, maybe even another beyond that. So why is this one seeming to be such an issue?

Well, for one, there have been far too many periods where I haven’t been writing at all, and others where I was barely doing more than that. Granted there have been some fairly momentous occasions during that time frame (my marriage, moving to the US, our first house) but it still seems like I should be a lot further along than I am.

Another is that compared to House Valerius, which was written in a completely linear fashion, I’ve hopped around a lot more with this one. Some chapters were left unfinished while I jumped ahead, then I went back when I felt I was getting bogged down there. Mainly that was in an attempt to keep myself writing, regardless of precisely what I was writing.

Of course, I never feel like I’ve written enough in a given period and I think that feeling is likely to continue, unless I start doing a chapters worth per day.

Another thing, even though I’m closing in (or so I hope) on finishing a first draft of A House Divided; it feels a slower and somehow slighter than House Valerius. I feel sure I’ll need to do a pretty heavy re-draft; maybe expand on some settings, definitely deepen my characterisations, probably tweak some plot points. It seems one of the downsides of having it spread over such a long period means I’m vaguer than I’d like about some details. And as someone who appreciates good continuity keeping elsewhere, that strikes me as more than a little unforgivable.

Maybe once I get that second draft down (and I think I’d have to set some definite deadlines for part), then it might be ready for beta readers….