While working on the outline for the next book in my series, I recognize that it was taking a fair amount of time for the story to move along. My initial thought was that I should combine several days into a chapter and skip over some of what was happening, to get my main character quicker to her hometown since I had some activities that were going to happen there. But I didn’t feel quite right with it so I took a break from working on the timeline as I thought about things and told myself not to rush. I’m glad I did that. Some of what I was rushing to get to, I think belongs in the next book in the series not this one. Since I am writing about two women and one of them has her baby in chapter 1 and there are many issues around this, I don’t want to compress the time in the story. And it turns out my other main character should have growth in an area that I was going to skim over.
It will also give me the opportunity to begin the next book with the visit to Cleveland half over. Since my book takes place mainly in France, I was kind of wondering how to limit how much I had to talk about Cleveland. So I’m postponing the visit to Cleveland which is something my husband says many people do.
Maybe we will even visit Cleveland before I outline book 6 so I can gather some fresh material. We were in Cleveland a few years ago, so I do have some material. But a fresh perspective can be good.
And, with travel having been so limited, even visiting Cleveland sounds fun.