For those of you who were here for much of the first draft, you know that I had employed a writing technique where I wrote a chapter and then offered a piece of the main character’s memory as the chapter break. The memories in the work are exceptionally important to the plot. Believe me when I say that they are definitely not “just” a device to introduce you, the reader, to this big world. There’s a reason why those memories come into Serafina’s head the way that they do, and that reason is a “big” one.

I’ve been going back-and-forth during my revisions, because the memories interrupt the flow of the story in a way that might be too challenging for the reader to overcome over the course of the full-length novel. There are other ways I can provide the memories that wouldn’t interrupt the flow, but that also means that I’ll have to rework the story to include more setting description to pick up the “slack.”

The mosaic-style of writing for the first draft works well for a lot of novels, but I’m not convinced that it’s the right way to go for this one, in part because that flow of memories leads to a conclusion.

Well, back to the drawing board I suppose. Sorry I didn’t have better news for you, but some days that’s just how it is.