As I mentioned in my previous post (Shifting Gears), I just started the prewriting phase of my latest project while my recently completed novel refrigerates a bit. During last week’s work sessions—which were about as sporadic & choppy as you can imagine—I did my best to keep my brain in energetic gear two (Mithu Storoni would be proud of me), paced myself well, & penned the first preface to anything I’ve written.

The only problem was it clocked in at over a thousand words.

No worries, I thought, since after my proofreading dive into Core Haven, my editorial eye is about as sharp as it ever gets. But then I realized the preface read more like a prologue since I was using it as a way of crystalizing my 3^rd-person narrator’s voice before I really put on the gas.

Blurring a line like that usually isn’t an issue for me, but somehow I felt stuck. I ended up feeling the same way after I tried writing a more traditional, shorter preface & relegating the unabridged version to the Appendix.

So I took a walk in the rain & considered my options. I could use a prefatory quotation or even recruit somebody to write a foreword or—

Nah, my calm gear two said. Let’s drop that whole preface/prologue/foreword rigmarole like a bag of rocks & stick with the format of the previous two novels—cover, copyright, dedication, story, author’s note.

Now that has a nice, simple feel to it, don’t you think?

Let the storytelling roll.

Till next time.

Drew

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