October 2024 in writing

2024.10.31
(writing) (third draft) (outlining) (whiskey) (rye) (tracy)

Ready or not

There’s a lot more I want to do with pre-third-draft worldbuilding, outlining, and planning. But I’ve hit an enthusiasm gap – my productivity has fallen off drastically for a number of reasons, and I know I see a lot of this work as chores and housekeeping rather than creative work.

I decided mid-month that I’m going to get back to editing and drafting come November, whether I’m fully ready or not.

I did manage to do the following:

  • finished porting the scene beats to the main outline
  • revisited each arc’s primary beats
  • named most of the places, things, and characters that had placeholder names.
  • came up with a bunch of good ideas during dog walks and dog park visits, and added those to the outline.

Distractions

October was not a great month for writing. Life has been getting in the way:

  • We had to put Whiskey to sleep. She was the best dog, but she was having some very tough weeks and months. We already miss her terribly.
  • Tracy has been working at Terror in the Corn, so most/all of the chores and dog duties fell on my shoulders this month. (I’ve been taking Rye to the dog park twice a day for most of October to get her zoomies out.)
  • Probably the worst distraction: doomscrolling the election. Even if the results are good, I’m not sure if the political atmosphere will improve before spring. I finally came to my senses and hid/uninstalled some apps and set screen time limits for other apps and websites.
  • I got a Steam Deck. It helps me de-stress, unplug from doomscrolling, and relax, while keeping myself in the fantasy mindset. Either that, or I’m just slacking off. Possibly both.

I also worked on some website stuff, so if I was, in fact, avoiding my book, that certainly contributed.

However, I did manage to do at least a little something for the book each day. And I would like to thank the Raiders for being ass again, giving me a few hours back every week.

Plans for November

In November, I’ll get started on drafting/editing again. If I finish a chapter per day, I’ll be done by early/mid January. If I finish a scene per day, I’ll be done in early/mid February. I think these soft deadlines are easier to hit, since some percentage of the scenes are mostly there. There are scenes that I have to [re]write from scratch, but not all that many.

I’m planning to:

  • add Questions/Promises/Reveals into the main outline as I go
  • add the settings/seasonality to the main outline as I go
  • develop more characterization, worldbuilding, and descriptions as I go

Stats

Again, the non-manuscript word count is somewhat inflated since I have multiple copies of the outline as I refactor.

Manuscript markdown files: 95
Manuscript words: 139252
Total markdown files: 462
Total words: 429879

My outline’s beat count has exploded as I add detail and track more things:

End of Draft 2.5:  958 beats, 65 arcs, 93 scenes
End of August:    1088 beats, 70 arcs, 99 scenes
End of September: 1804 beats, 70 arcs, 95 scenes
End of October:   2139 beats, 63 arcs, 95 scenes

(I consolidated a number of smaller arcs into larger ones.)

I’ll update the outline as I write/edit the third draft, which will let me see how the changes will affect the story as a whole.