April 2024 in writing
Still slowly but surely From April 23:
Since then, I edited 7 scenes from the 2nd POV, bringing me to 37 scenes out of 98 completed for Draft 2.5. At this average rate, I’ll finish sometime in August. But if I keep up the scene per day from the past week, I may finish at the end of July.
First person I also dabbled a bit with converting the 1st POV from third-person limited, past-tense into first person, past-tense.
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
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
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)
(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.