Words/Time: 3 hours, 53 minutes

This was a huge leap forward, considering how my last few days have been. I definitely have a lazy Sunday to thank for that. They won’t always be this prolific, that much I know.

The majority of this time was spent working on my overall story timeline (for several books in one story world), updating/inputting the information for “Vin” that wasn’t already in there. But before I could do that, I had to put in the information for a book that I’d yet to even add to my timeline.

I wrote a very, very rough draft of what I was calling “Jonathan and the Book” for NaNo 2015. It wasn’t even complete, though it basically had an ending, because I jumped from a later middle spot to the climax because I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I needed to keep writing, ’cause…NaNo. I could put enough of it into the timeline to know where the events of “Vin” that come after it will fall, and they can always be moved later.

While I was doing this, I had to read through the draft of “Jonathan and the Book” so I could mark days, and I had an epiphany! I now have a name for that book–“The Seeger Book.” This makes me very happy.

An hour of my time was spent writing out some brainstorming for a giant, gaping question that starts out the sequence of events in “Vin,” and I think I have it mostly closed up. There are still a few minor questions, but I think I can move on.

I also spent a portion of this time organizing the labels and colors in my timeline. I use Aeon Timeline (so far, I still prefer the original to Aeon 2), and you can color-code your events. I have a color for each book, and in the case of at least one book, 2 colors to differentiate 2 distinct arcs. You can also separate events by arcs, but my arcs were out of order, based on the order I tend to think of them in my head. So I spent some time getting them in order, and fixing the colors. I had originally just assigned random colors, but I was running out of distinctly different colors that were easy to read. So I messed with that a bit. It was kind of fun (I’m messy in real life, but I enjoy organizing things digitally), but felt like a waste of time until I realized how much this is going to help me down the line, to have the timeline a lot more organized. So it counts.

My next step is to start outlining, using the timeline of events. I want to keep doing writing practice, answering character questions, and other things to continue to learn about Vin’s motives, but even if I don’t always know why he does things, I know when he does them (though I’ve made up my mind that even that is subject to change, whether it will force me to change an already “finished” book or not).

This is a crazy long writing check-in…but that’s because I did so much for once! I’ll be busier the next several days, so my updates will probably be short again for a while.

For anyone out there who is participating in NaNoWriMo, feel free to check out my series of tips and tricks for the month, and also to add me as a writing buddy! (Let me know you came from here, and I’ll add you back!)