Aliens, Time Travel and Trilogies

So, I let my readers in on my beliefs about aliens and time travel this week and then I thought about how it all ties back into my writing.

I could say that having a wide open mind helps with my fiction (it does), or that writing is writing and anytime I'm writing I'm also learning about my craft (I am), but mostly my last two posts, and especially Let's Rectify Stuff Together, ties back to what I'm doing with my writing in a different way.

I didn't really sit down at the beginning of this year and outline my idea of the perfect story, mainly because I was afraid that I would lose the story that was already building in my head if I dissected it even for a second. The most outlining I did was with how I wanted to seperate my story into three books. (Outlining is very important. I do outline. I just didn't spend a lot of time formalizing it before I started hammering out the first book.)

If I had stepped back and thought about it, I might have written a stand alone novel first. But I wrote a trilogy first and that's okay too. Besides the fact that it might be really challenging to get my trilogy published over a stand alone novel, I have other writing challenges with writing three interlinking books.

After I wrote the first one, I immediately started writing the second one (I say, as long as the story is there, let it flow). That's when I realized just how difficult it was going to be to write these three books without having a final draft of the first one. As the first was being professionally edited, problems came up that were easy to change in the first book, but more difficult to change in the second book, but I managed.

I am done with the second book and working on the third book. Now that I have eyes on the second book, I am concerned about what kind of changes I have to make from the edits that won't screw with the outcome of all the books.

This week on my blog, I used my life as an example of how going back in time to make changes to the details could have devastating effects in the outcome of the end goal. That's the overall challenge I'm having now with my WIP. That might be why I should have gone with a stand alone first. But I wouldn't go back in time to change it.