Just a quick update for those still curious about Dreaming Pools progress. Overcoming a little bit of a lag with all of the excitement in real life, I’m back to working the grinding stone. Still editing the first draft (print out + red pen), and playing with some scene/chapter ideas. My first draft taught me that a good outline is priceless – as soon as my outline started to peter out, so did the thread of the story. Compiled on top of that the fact that my outline ended before the end of the book, and I ended up with a half baked ending (ouch). So when I’m not editing the first draft with a heavy pen, I’m also toying with some new approaches to a few of the characters and basically rewriting half of the book (the non-Yaesuf parts so far) so that it feels more tied together. I also started work on a fresh outline today to try and gather together the loose thoughts I have for where I went wrong (and right) with the first draft, and merging in the original work. Once I finish with the editing process and see how much of the original survived, I plan on taking my new outline and beginning in earnest on a second draft/rewrite.