Or “I finally fixed my description for Joshua’s Nightmares, I have big writing news, and figured out a way to explain some of the laziness in my writing that makes sense.”

Over the course of the past month or so, I’ve written over fifty-thousand new words in my first draft of Joshua’s Nightmares. That’s a NaNoWriMo’s worth of words. Almost a metric shit-ton, or perhaps more than a metric- shit-ton (I honestly don’t know how to properly quantify that much, but I know it’s a lot). It’s been an extraordinary adventure, and I still have a fair bit to go before it’s over. Again, I want to apologize to, as well as thank, all of the people who have to endure me talking at great lengths about this project. I almost apologized to my journal a couple nights ago because I keep writing about writing this, and that’s when I realized I need to calm down and just enjoy every little bit of the writing process as this idea gradually grows into its end stages. It’s the longest piece of writing I’ve ever worked on, and it’s the most excited I’ve been to work on anything in quite some time (since before Thesis Seminar at Edinboro, which was certainly a thing that happened). It’s fifteen pages shy of hitting the 200 page mark, and that seems pretty amazing to me.

In light of all the work Joshua’s Nightmares has seen, I updated its page. The update was long overdue, as my synopsis felt a bit lacking (that’s me being a bit kind), and it now reflects my decision to make Joshua’s Nightmares into a two-book set (I feel like I can’t call it a series because it’s just two books). However, I then ran into the issue of writing a synopsis for book two without spoiling things in book one. Ultimately, I decided I want to give these characters two books so I could see their stories through to proper closure. It feels a bit selfish of me, but then I remembered that I’m a writer and I can do whatever the hell I want with my characters. So yeah, totally selfish and maybe a touch self-congratulatory.

The one major breakthrough, which happened after some small concerns about writing so many characters, has to do with all the faceless people wandering between main characters. It occurred to me how it would be such a colossal pain to give everyone names and backstories. That’s when what now seems so obvious hit me: most of the people that occupy dreams are forgotten almost right away after waking. It would be nearly impossible for me to name all of the guards in the Throne of Peaceful Rest, or every single traveler who travels the Everdark. I pluck characters out and give them clarity as necessary, leaving the rest to occupy the background as they would if it were an actual dream. Yes, it’s a totally cheap way to deal with an otherwise massive problem.

My biggest complaint? There’s not enough hours in the day to continue working on this.