amwriting

Daily Writing Check-in: March 12, 2019

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Words/Time:  23 minutes doing preliminary work for the new outline of “The Seeger Book.”

First, I wrote out a couple of big questions about a major event in the book–mostly asking when and why this event happens. Unlike other times when I write out a big plot question that I’m stuck on and brainstorm all possible solutions, this time the answer didn’t readily present itself. I sat and stared at the page for little while, trying to decide how important this event was to the story at all. But I do think it’s crucial to the climax. And I think I have figured out the why, though I am going to wait to commit to the when.

I then continued my conversation with Jonathan about the events of this story, hoping it will lead me to the when.

I cut my time short tonight, even though I still have an hour and a half before midnight, because I have a headache and had a frustrating, emotionally taxing day. Figuring out the plot for this story is a marathon, not a sprint, so no need to push myself on a rough day. I’m going to veg out on video games now.

Daily Writing Check-in: March 11, 2019

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Words/Time:  50 minutes doing preliminary work for the new outline of “The Seeger Book.”

I continued my conversation with Jonathan, and we started to talk about the events of the story. We cleared up at least one mess caused by a terrible first draft, and then I realized I had a huge question about when a pivotal event should happen in this new, hopefully much better outline.

I also spent a little time tracking down a backup to my outline for “Unexpectedly” because I thought I had lost a lot of information somehow. It turned out it was just a setting in Scrivener that I didn’t realize I had triggered. Boy, did I panic though, because the info that I thought I was missing wasn’t in the backup either. But it’s all safe, so I’m good.

Daily Writing Check-in: March 10, 2019

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Words/Time:  25 minutes doing preliminary work for the new outline of “The Seeger Book.”

I continued my conversation with Jonathan, talking through the major players who are working against him in this story. I think we have them straightened out, so tomorrow, we’ll start focusing on the events. I may be ready to work on the outline relatively soon.

I didn’t do any work yesterday, because I just didn’t have the desire to do it. I’ve learned in the past that if I push past a strong feeling to not work on writing, it can lead to burn-out (in fact, it was NaNoWriMo 2015, when the first draft of this story was terribly written, that I learned that lesson). It can be a delicate balance, because if I just ignore my writing for too long, I can end up in a months- or even years-long slump, but I knew I was still enjoying doing the work, just didn’t feel up to it yesterday.

Daily Writing Check-in: March 8, 2019

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Words/Time:  1 hour, 5 minutes doing preliminary work for the new outline of “The Seeger Book.”

I finished reading the first draft of the book that was written during NaNoWriMo in 2015. I actually did that yesterday; it took me 8 minutes before I went to bed. Then yesterday, my husband and I went to a concert and we’re home until after midnight, so I didn’t do any other work, and decided it wasn’t worth typing up a post for 8 minutes worth.

The rest of the time was spent, both before I went to bed this morning, as well as this evening, having my first one-on-one conversation with the main character of this book–Jonathan. He’s been included in a group discussion in the past, but I needed some time alone with him to try to get a handle on this plot. It’s kind of all over the place. We’re making progress, but I anticipate this conversation lasting several days.

Daily Writing Check-in: March 6, 2019

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Words/Time:  1 hour, 48 minutes doing preliminary work for the new outline of “The Seeger Book.”

Today I continued with reading the first draft of the book that was written during NaNoWriMo in 2015. I’m near the end and plan to finish it as soon as I have posted this.

For the last 2 days, I complained about how bad this was, and today was no better. But reading the climax, and reading through the last 6500 words of the draft, which was really just my “out-loud” brainstorming what I was missing in the story, so I wouldn’t forget my thoughts in the future, I at least remember why I was excited about this story in the first place. Which is a great place to be when starting to work on the new outline.

The main thing I’m learning from the jumbled mess I’m reading, though, is that I don’t really need to try to hold very strictly to what was already written…because I clearly had no clue how I wanted the story to go. So I might as well start from scratch with the very vague idea of the Seeger Book being at the heart of a murder-mystery. The culprit will be the same, and that’s pretty much it.

Daily Writing Check-in: March 5, 2019

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Words/Time:  53 minutes doing preliminary work for the new outline of “The Seeger Book.” (Same exact amount of time I spent yesterday…weird.)

Today I continued with reading the first draft of the book that was written during NaNoWriMo in 2015. It’s a pretty terrible first draft, even as first drafts go. I can tell I had no real focus, no solid plot. Just a few points to hit and a lot of boring stuff in between.

Developing sub-plots is going to be a necessary task for the development of this plot. The only one that exists right now involves nothing but a bunch of emo-fodder for the 2 secondary main characters. And then one of them said the most horrific line I’ve ever written (and I’ve written some doozies), and I just about gave up. I suppose it wasn’t what he said, but how he said it.

I also may be seeing some of the near-burn-out I experienced that year, which is just a sad thing to be able to feel in the writing. One of the reasons I’m reading through this is to remember the ideas I had for how the plot should go. Ideas that came up during writing, and thus can’t just be found in the original outline. Get the whole story fresh in my mind again. That part is working as intended.

The other reason, though, was to make note of any good spots–a good scene, good dialog, good paragraph, even just a good vague idea that I can use again. So far, not quite halfway through the draft…I’ve got nothing. So sad. But hey, I’m definitely learning what not to do in the next draft.

Daily Writing Check-in: March 4, 2019

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Words/Time:  53 minutes doing preliminary work for the new outline of “The Seeger Book.”

For now, this work entails reading the first draft of the book that was written during NaNoWriMo in 2015. So far, I’m not particularly enjoying it, which is sad, but not surprising. In fact, of all of the 7 books I have planned, all of which have at least some version of a draft written, this is my least favorite. Not the story idea itself, but what has been written for it.

I think the main reason for this is that I wasn’t as prepared in advance of writing this as I prefer to be, so it’s very disjointed. (I’ve said this before and will say it again–I am not a pantser.) But as I’m reading, I’m realizing something else–my long-time two favorite characters, who play a secondary role in this book, are just…annoying. She keeps whining and he’s not really helping much either.

I am now 100% certain this book needs a complete rewrite, rather than a revision, and I fully expect to come out way ahead after doing that. I have literally just this moment decided that I am definitely going to write the new draft for this for Camp NaNoWriMo that starts in April. As long as the outline is done and I feel confident in the mystery set-up. So maybe this. This or “Unexpectedly.” Maybe. Or maybe I’ll just use Camp NaNo to push the amount of the same writing work that I do in a day. Wow, I just talked myself out of writing the first draft of this book over the course of writing this paragraph.

A Monday Moment: Mistaken Identity

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Natos had specifically chosen to spend that day alone, not wanting to get caught up in his brother’s chaos for once. He figured Jaffna would be safe, because he’d heard Acronis discuss heading to Taellyn with some of the others. As soon as he heard the giggle right behind him, he knew he should have gone to Qulu instead. His brother and the others would never bother with that remote location.

Despite hearing her coming, he wasn’t expecting the arms to wrap around his body from behind. He let out a startled yelp and pulled away, turning around quickly.

“Inanna!” he said with a gasp.

“Oh!” Her face turned bright red and she covered her cheeks with her hands. “I thought you were Acronis!”

“I gathered,” he muttered.

“I’m so sorry!”

“Right…well, it’s not a big deal.”

“Maybe not for you,” she said breathlessly. “You’re…Natos, right?”

He refrained from rolling his eyes as he nodded his head. It wasn’t that he minded that this rather attractive young woman preferred his brother to him. But despite how little he cared to hang out with his Acronis and the others, he had been around a lot when Acronis was in Jaffna and spent time with Inanna. Was it that hard to remember his name?

“Is Acronis here too?” she asked, looking around the area.

“I don’t think so. I heard them talking about going to Taellyn today.”

She stuck her bottom lip out. “What’s in Taellyn? Who is in Taellyn?”

Natos only shrugged. He couldn’t tell her what he was thinking. I couldn’t even begin to care. Why on earth do you want anything to do with my brother or those others that he spends all of his time with? What must be wrong with you that this is the kind of attention you want?

The truth was, he had always seen signs that Inanna’s family was not much better than his own. He felt bad for the girl, but on the other hand, at least her life was better than his. At least she wouldn’t be expected to become a mercenary and assassin, living in the shadows for the rest of her life, never having the chance to have real connections with others. He could only hope that she didn’t waste her freedom—that she would outgrow this fascination with his brothers and find some better friends.

Prompt used: What if your character was mistaken for someone else?

Daily Writing Check-in: March 3, 2019

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Words/Time:  1 hour, 36 minutes finishing item #2 in my current writing goals list, and starting on #3.

Finishing #2 entailed finishing the outline for “Unexpectedly.” There are 4 character arcs for this book that I am outlining individually from each other:
Juris
Evan
Acronis
Rusalki

Today I finished Evan’s section, and completely outlined Acronis’s and Rusalki’s. I also hit on an idea for how to start the entire novel, showing the connection between all 4 characters right away, before the narrator, Drear, splits off their stories. I still don’t know for sure if I want the stories to be told simultaneously or linearly, but I’m pretty excited to have the starting point.

Upon realizing that I’m progressing through my list of long-term writing goals much more quickly than I anticipated, I decided to start keeping track of how long each one took as I move on to #3. (This is a count of actual days worked, so not counting days where I skipped working on writing, or worked on something else.)

1. Outline “Outcast” – Time spent: 12 days

2. Outline “Unexpectedly” – Time spent: 7 days

3. Re-outline “The Seeger Book” – I wrote the first draft of this for NaNoWriMo in 2015. It was the 2nd book I wrote that month, and came in at 43,672 words. It is a murder-mystery, and only the 2nd one I have ever attempted (the 1st murder-mystery I ever wrote was earlier that month, and it really fell flat). It needs some overhauling and almost an entire mid-section, because I jumped from somewhere in the middle to the climax when the end of the month neared and I realized I was out of time to figure out the rest of the plot. I also think I need to re-think the suspects, clues, etc. of the mystery aspect.

4. Re-outline “Vin”

5. Re-outline “Protector”

I do expect #3 to take considerably longer than the other 2. The first draft was not very well planned, so I have a lot of work ahead of me to figure out how the story even needs to go. I’m starting with reading the first draft to remember all of my ideas. Unfortunately, it is still in full NaNo-form, because I didn’t touch it at all afterwards.

Sometimes I’ll spend the first few weeks after November ends doing a quick clean-up of what I wrote–mostly removing things I marked as NaNo fodder and at least doing a quick spell check. This is usually better to do while the story is still fresh, and then it’s good to let it sit for some time.

So I’ve already done a quick spell-check, and I’ll remove the NaNo fodder as I read.

Daily Writing Check-in: March 2, 2019

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Words/Time: 1 hour, 18 minutes working on the outline of “Unexpectedly.”

There are 4 character arcs for this book that I am outlining individually from each other:
Juris
Evan
Acronis
Rusalki

Today, I completed the outline for Juris and created more than half of the outline for Evan.

For Juris’s arc, Juris is actually not the main character. The story is mostly about a developing relationship, and is shown more from his love interest’s perspective. I wasn’t sure if that was the right way to go at first, because the idea of this book is to show the lives of 4 people who are on 2 different sides of the same war, and I’m really showing someone else’s life more than the life of the person who’s actually in the war. However, I like the way we learn who Juris is through the eyes of his love interest, and frankly, the drama is better this way.

For Evan’s arc, I am struggling with a psychological component near the end of his arc that I have to make sure to pull off correctly, to avoid leaving the reader guessing about something that I don’t intend to be confusing. I’ll tackle this fresh tomorrow.