Armored Piercing Operations

I'm now 72 pages into the second draft of AP3, which is 22 pages since the last update. Things got a little rough but I'm glad I wrote two times what I did last week. I'm finally on page two of the outline. The current chapter is set in Moscow, Russia. I forgot to write a chapter before where a different group of characters get kidnapped. Thankfully, I found a way to add it in without having to do any restructuring. The Moscow scene is split into two parts: one that is essentially a briefing and the other is the mission. I put the kidnapping chapter between the briefing and mission.

I think I can get the Moscow chapter done quickly. The next mission will be in Afghanistan and I think I'm going to have challenges again with character bios of returning characters. So don't be surprised if I write…

I'm now at 50 pages for AP3's second draft, which is 11 pages since the last update. So, one page less than last week. I struggled with doing character bios for new characters. See, most of these "new" characters are in AP4 as well, so coming up with consistent details between the different books was challenging.

I also struggled a lot with the first battle set in France. I kept erasing and rewriting different parts. I keep overextending scenes compared to the OG draft. For some reason, I keep worrying about the action scenes not being too over-the-top. If you read the sample chapters of the OG drafts of AP1/AP2, then you'll know how over-the-top my old writing used to be. I don't want to fall into the realism trap where I can't write any fun scenes. I need to go back to being ok with writing silly scenes.

At…

So I'm currently at 39 pages written for the AP3 second draft, which is 12 pages since the last update. The main reason I wrote much less than the first week is because I've been having more difficulty figuring out what to fix. What I've written covers the first page of the outline, so basically one page for the outline accounts for 39 pages for the draft. In comparison to the OG draft, it would cover around the 20-28 page mark. Not having the beginning parts in great detail on the outline has made it hard to go through this part in the second draft. However, I do have ideas of how to continue so this slump won't last long I hope.

Some weeks I'll write less than others despite writing almost every single day. This is the process with writing. But doing these types of updates will help me…

I procrastinated for a long time before starting the second draft of AP3. My mental health went down again and I'm still dealing with stress. I wish I could change my environment so I wouldn't have to deal with it anymore, but that's not feasible right now. However, just like with AP4 last year, finally working on AP3 has given me a boost and working on it has been the main thing I look forward to doing everyday.

If you followed my updates last year with AP4 and AP3's second draft outline, then look forward to more updates with AP3's second draft. I know it's been 5 years since AP2, so I hope you'll bear with me as I try to get this next entry out.