The worst part about starting a book more than ten years ago is that one tends to improve their skill in writing as time goes by. That's okay, though. You can always get it in editing, re-writing, changing things to fit the writer you've become. Hell, I've already changed massive story arcs for characters, destroyed others entirely, changed hangers-on into passers-by, etc. It's what happens with books. But my latest decision is a doozy...
Moribund, as it stands, is entirely written in the present-tense. For example: "Mary walks to the cupboard, careful to avoid the praying mantis standing motionless on the floorboards." And present tense is great. It was the perfect choice when Moribund was a short story. It still worked when it was a very long short story. It started to sound a bit rough when it became the length of a novella. And now, standing at several hundred pages in a paperback, it simply isn't working anymore.
That being said, I've decided to change the tense for an entire novel – from present tense to past.
It's also highly possible that I'll change my opinion on this once again. It's a story. It may end up mixed-tense. In the end, though, I can only promise that I will release something worth your time. Chances are that all of the little things I keep stressing about will go completely un-noticed by 90% of you, which means I will have done something right.
If you're a $5 and above patron, you'll have a new story to read in rough-draft form soon, and you have a second draft of A San Francisco Story already waiting for you. Let me know what you think of them.
Until next time, expect me to be drinking far more coffee than is healthy.
