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March 2024 in writing
March 2024 in writing Slowly but surely I’m drafting again. Slower than I want to be, but I think the quality is higher. (Sometimes I’ve gone back to my first draft to rewrite a scene, and I’ve ended up throwing it out completely. Better to start from scratch on those than try to rescue any words.)
The new structure seems to be working so far. The alarm bells that went off during the first draft, warning me that the story just isn’t working, have been relatively quiet.
February 2024 in writing
February 2024 in writing I’m back My github activity shows I’m out of my December/January productivity slump :)
One outline to rule them all In February I combined all of my small single-arc plot tables into one massive table spanning the entire book. While this was challenging, I now find the story exploding in my mind, a non-stop chain reaction of ideas. I can see the book in its entirety at a high level, and I can dig down to subtle details.
January 2024 in writing
January 2024 in writing Fixing all the arcs In January, I continued drilling down into each of the arcs’ beats and structure, moving between index cards, spreadsheets, markdown tables, and good old bullet points. (Switching between these media also served as a way for me to review my previous work and ideas, often sparking ideas on how to fix or improve the old structures and scene ideas.) A number of the old Draft 2.
complex plotting: tools and approach (december)
Complex Plotting: Tools and Approach (December in Writing) My third POV is re-outlined in broad strokes, and I’m working on drilling down into the scene level. It does feel like the story and characters are coming back alive for me.
However, most of December has been a struggle in writing productivity and focus. I have been improving my tools and outlines, so I’ll focus this blog post on those.
GoodNotes 5 and templates I had purchased GoodNotes 5 for my iPad some time ago.
November 2023 in writing
November 2023 in writing Summary I wrote and/or edited 28,786 words for NaNoWriMo before stopping failing.
I struggled with my writing for two weeks, then a conversation with Finn helped point me in the right direction. I’m back to the outlining drawing board to try to solve some of the structural issues I’m hitting that are bogging down the second draft. (I could add the outlining wordcount to the month’s total, but I’m still nowhere near 50k.