Jumping forward in time

View from my bedroom window last night; amid the clouds Venus shines brightly!

Right now I am Future Me, not merely due to achy fingers from perhaps a little too much hand stitching last night. Right now it's 2023, but for the last several weeks I have been living in a fictional era twenty years in the past. Phones weren't ubiquitous, which might be the biggest difference, but it is a large one. Yet I'm leaping into modern times with the next installment of my series, aging my characters and placing smart phones front and center. And in this future, time is a bit.... uncertain, both for how much a character has, and what's happening to everyone around them.

In the future, which coincides with the present, I'm also facing deconstructing, then reconstructing a manuscript. Some of the descriptive hoo haa I typed in February will be omitted, in that much of this cast has already been introduced. In this now second book, I also gave a 'voice' to those living nearby, the neighbors as you will. Employing that element as a manner of description now feels unnecessary, and I'll revise that perspective heavily.

Then there is the fun part of incorporating all the history that now fills my brain. These folks are no longer strangers to me, and I'll plump up their personalities accordingly, as well as gently tweaking a few who in the last couple of months have gained loftier spots in the character food chain.

I have never written a book, then returned to it with this sense of alteration, which could sound strange; every novel requires revisions. But originally this was written as a standalone, it sputtered out at sixty-six K, then received a ridiculous ending which served as a marvelous catalyst to something much larger than its solitary self. That too is new, so I'm going into this second novel with a proverbial walking stick in hand to keep myself steady as I navigate an altered course, both for having plenteous backstory now available and to fend off, or beat back lol, what no longer applies.

This is one process of writing; being open to tearing something apart in order to bring it new life. A seam ripper acts similarly, but takes less active brain power. I'm curious in this initial foray how the slicing and dicing goes. Hopefully I won't suffer too many virtual paper cuts along the way.