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Daily Writing Check-in: June 7, 2019

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Words/Time:  41 minutes working on pre-writing for Book 3 of “Pursuit of Power” trilogy.

I really wanted to work longer today, but it was not to happen. I continued with the character interview with a character I can’t put a name to here for spoiler reasons. We got to talk about his personal life, which was pretty fun. Then we went on to talk about the actual situation that is happening in the book. I think this interview will only go on another day or two, and hopefully at that point, I’ll be able to finish the outline for this book, and move on to another task.

Daily Writing Check-in: June 6, 2019

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Words/Time:  54 minutes working on pre-writing for Book 3 of “Pursuit of Power” trilogy.

I continued the character interview with the man who shall remain nameless, and spent the entire time on that. I don’t have much else to say today (which is pretty surprising for me). But I will at least say that I’ve really been enjoying this conversation and only just finally got to his personal story, after spending most of today talking about the place he’s been living as a whole, and another character in relation to that.

Daily Writing Check-in: June 5, 2019

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Words/Time:  1 hour, 16 minutes working on pre-writing for Book 3 of “Pursuit of Power” trilogy.

I thought for a while last night about my issue where the main sub-plot doesn’t actually connect to the book’s main plot at all. And I hit on a way to make them connect, which I think makes the story even more intriguing! So I wrote that into the outline, and then hit on another huge question that goes back to the very beginning of planning out my story world. I took some time away from my writing to think about this question, and then came back and wrote out the question and brainstormed answers.

I think I’ve come to a decision on this matter, though there’s still one small question that niggles at my brain. I’m moving on for now though. I added a little more to my outline, and then came to what will probably be the lead-up to the climax…but I don’t really know what’s going to happen. I can set it aside and figure that when it’s time to write, since the rest of the story up to that spot might point the way to the next step, but I don’t want to leave it alone yet.

So I decided it’s again time to do a type of pre-writing that has literally never failed me yet–a character interview. And it didn’t take me long to know exactly who the interview should be with…but I can’t even say who it is without being a huge spoiler. He’ll most likely be an integral part of this book’s climax though, and is a character that is relatively  unknown to me. So it’s time to get to know him!

Daily Writing Check-in: June 4, 2019

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Words/Time:  1 hour, 33 minutes working on pre-writing for Book 3 of “Pursuit of Power” trilogy.

I started to outline the story, thinking I’d make it a broad outline. That turned into more like my normal type of outline though, but I’m pretty happy with how it’s going. However, I have now become aware that I have a sub-plot that isn’t related enough to the main plot. I figured it fit in there simply because the book that precedes it, “Protector,” had both of these plots too. But in that book, the sub-plot tied very well into the main plot. Now that sub-plot is the main plot of the next book, and the main plot of “Protector” goes a whole other direction, and isn’t a very connected sub-plot. So I am going to have to decide if I can make that work or need to scrap this sub-plot.

Daily Writing Check-in: June 3, 2019

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Words/Time:  1 hour, 11 minutes working on pre-writing for Book 3 of “Pursuit of Power” trilogy.

I finished the character interview with 6 of the most prominent characters that will be in that book. I answered a few questions about some vague ideas I had, and I think I will write a broad outline of this story before I set it aside for now.

I was in Chicago yesterday and some of today. We walked a lot yesterday, and got back to our hotel late. I tried to work on my writing, and managed to for about 7 minutes, but was too tired to do more, and didn’t feel the need to post about that small of an amount. I added it to today’s time instead.

Daily Writing Check-in: June 1, 2019

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Words/Time:  58 minutes working on pre-writing for Book 3 of “Pursuit of Power” trilogy.

I continued the character interview that I started yesterday with 6 of the most prominent characters that will be in that book. We mostly discussed where each of them left off in “Protector,” which has so far also included the next action each of them will take, which will lead into the book that I’m planning.

Daily Writing Check-in: May 31, 2019

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Words/Time:  39 minutes working on goal #1 in my new short-list of writing goals.

1. Plan Book 3 of “Pursuit of Power” trilogy – Though I have always thought of this conclusion book as being something I’d hold off on working on until much later, the ideas for what should be in this book have just been flowing in the last several weeks. So I’m going to start with some broad planning, and either come up with an outline, or at least a solid list of plot points for now

2. Final revision of “Pithea” – All of my writing goals this year have been for one final goal: to know what, if any changes, future book drafts may force in “Pithea,” so I can get those things changed now, before attempting to publish this book again. I want to make sure it’s exactly what it needs to be, as book 1 in this series of books. I do have a list of things that I want to change–nothing huge–and goal #1 in this list could prompt more. So after that book has a semi-solid plan, I will do what will hopefully be a final revision to “Pithea”, at least regarding changes prompted by me, rather than by someone else like an editor, and look into publishing options.

I started on #1 today, which first entailed writing out broad strokes of ideas I have for this book. Then I decided that it was time for the mother of all character interviews. I’m bringing in all of the characters that will have the largest roles in this book to discuss where they left off in the previous book (“Protector”) and then where they’ll go from there.

goal tracker 19-5-31

After a very light March and barely managing to win Camp NaNoWriMo in April with a goal of 30 minutes average per day, surpassing my goal of an average of 1 hour writing work per day in May was really nice. Here’s to an equally productive June!

Daily Writing Check-in: May 30, 2019

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Words/Time:  2 hours, 6 minutes finishing the outline of “Protector.”

As it turns out, there is a place for the formal outline style in my life. Though it didn’t work out for me in the past when outlining a story, it worked quite well for this one. Though I have outlined the story in Scrivener as well, that’s mostly because I already have a draft written, and will keep maybe 2/3 of it, so the already-written text can be sorted by scene there. But over the last couple of days, I started making a formal outline of this story as I tried to understand how the scenes would flow best, and it worked wonders.

I spent a lot of time getting this just right today, and marking the places that will need a new scene, or will need a lot added to an existing scene. There are still many other scenes that will need some revision (well, probably all of them to some degree), but that’s a job for another day.

For now, I have finished #5 on my list of writing goals that I put forth on Feb. 4th!

1. Outline “Outcast” – Time spent: 12 days (total of 8 hours, 32 minutes worked)

2. Outline “Unexpectedly” – Time spent: 7 days (total of 7 hours, 36 minutes worked)

3. Re-outline “The Seeger Book” – Time spent: 26 days (total of 20 hours, 39 minutes worked)

4. Re-outline “Vin” – Time spent: 16 days (total of 18 hours, 3 minutes worked)

5. Re-outline “Protector” – Time spent: 14 days (total of 13 hours, 56 minutes worked)

I already know what my next 2 goals will be, and I’ll re-evaluate after that. I’ll post those tomorrow though.

(I went through and added approximately how many actual hours I put into each goal, because I knew that some days I worked longer than others, and was curious about how much time was actually spent on each task. Most interesting to me is that the work on “The Seeger Book” was only about 2 1/2 hours longer than the work on “Vin,” but it took 10 more days.)

Daily Writing Check-in: May 29, 2019

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Words/Time:  1 hour, 27 minutes doing preliminary work for the new outline of “Protector.”

After posting about how uncertain I was about the way this work was going yesterday, I thought about what I said near the end of the post. I then came to the decision that I did have the wrong plot as the main plot. So I’ve changed some things up in my mind, and while the climax for the book that I have so far is not for the main plot, I think I can add another climax that will be for the main plot. And I even think I can downplay the climax I have so that it doesn’t overshadow the climax for the main plot that I will still need to write. I think.

Today’s time was spent continuing to sort through the scenes, adding in new ones that will need written, and moving some around so that they flow better. I’m still doing a lot of staring and thinking, but I feel like I’m understanding better as I go now. I’m really looking forward to the revision of this book, but I know it will be far down on a list of goals after I finish the current list.

I also started to put events into my timeline for all of the Pithea books, because I realized that some things were really skewed. I am considering cutting out about 2 years of time in this book.