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.