To Stop Dreaming is to Stop Living
9-30-25
Already I am nearing the halfway mark of another new novel. This one I will be calling Dreamfast for the purposes of this blog, and my goal for it is to be 300 pages. This is one of my most challenging trials to date in my writing career, and it is something that I know I can do, but that I’m not sure I’ve actually thought of the right story for it yet. Dreamfast has been plotted out for its major beats, but I am notorious for filling up those vague beats in my outlines with a little more meat than a debut author is allowed to pitch as their first novel. Don’t get me wrong, I am the last person to send my characters on side quests, or to bloat my pages with inconsequential scenes. I simply get so engrossed in the story that it seems a crime to leave it with the glance 300 pages always seems to give me.
I will continue to hem away at this latest story, and to try and keep my imagination as limited and confined as I can, but again, it has been one of the toughest exercises I’ve ever done. This is one of the reasons why I am mainly a pantser, that I despise my imagination being restricted, that the moment confines are placed around me, I seem to unconsciously defy those barriers, I seem to burst through them, to forget they had ever been placed there to begin with. With this story I have outlined more than ever before, and I’ve kept the beats to a minimum, same as the POVs, the overall cast, and the overall amount of things the reader has to keep up with, in an attempt to get to that short page goal.
The subject matter of Dreamfast is something I’ve never touched on, and takes place during a time in the Gatherer’s Bounty Universe that also I’ve never been able to dig into yet. That’s got me very excited to see this novel take shape, and even if I end up going over my word count, I know already after getting seven chapters in that it is going to be a fun one, and a worthy addition to my growing list of unpublished works.
As I often say here to you, my dearest of friends, thank you for reading, thank you for caring, and thank you for entering into these worlds that I’ve created,
JMB
