In which I admit to being a Very Bad Girl

Bless me, readers, for I have sinned.

Yes, it's true. Yesterday, I fell off the writing wagon. I did not write on my novel at all. Not a single word. I feel slightly soiled, as though I'd directed a sneeze into my shirtsleeve that really should have been sent into a strong, name-brand tissue.

So, I failed to meet my word count. I feel incomplete. Plus, I need a clean shirt.

It's not like I didn't think about the novel yesterday. I spent quite a few hours mulling over the re-plotting I now have to do, since the completion of Scenezilla deposited the story in a place somewhat to one side of where I had originally intended to go from here. What's more, this replotting required me to think in somewhat deeper detail about the circumstances surrounding the story's climax, which I had been putting off until later.

Writing, blogging, volunteering, and hair coloring

Yesterday was a very atypical day, in that I did more revising of the plot map, did a little writing, worked on a couple of different blog posts, spent an hour and a half phonebanking with Organizing for America, colored my hair (first time I've ever done it myself! Eek!), and finally got back to writing. Still, I did manage another 1102 words! I am closing in on 23% completed on my first draft.

I'm a little worried that I may be taking too long to get to my protagonist's decision point, but I'm just going to keep moving forward. I can sort all the plotting out later, and if I need to cut some stuff or move it around, the second draft is the proper venue for that.

Oh, and here's the result of my debut as a hair self-colorist:

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming

Still making steady progress, having added another 1072 words yesterday. Sometimes I find myself wondering how many of the words I'm banging out every day will survive into the second draft, but I suspect that such speculation is a threat to progress. After all, it's hard to justify writing words that may just end up on the novelist's equivalent of the cutting room floor. So let's not think about it, shall we? I am very close to 22% finished with the first draft, and that's something to celebrate!

Today, I would really like to get to what I feel is the end of the "first act" of the story, the point where the protagonist makes the decision that catalyzes the rest of the plot. I think I may be coming to it later than I should be, from a technical standpoint, and that may be something I have to correct in the next draft. But I have been pretty careful to make sure that every scene has actually moved the plot forward, so I do feel good about the plotting so far. And everyone who has read the draft has indicated that they are finding it gripping, so it doesn't seem to be a saggy story.

I don't know--maybe it's just fine. Who cares? I need a completed draft before I start dissecting the darn thing. Onward!

Back to the grindstone... thank God

Yesterday was a slow-starter. Most of the time I spent on the novel was applied to plotting in greater detail the next three big scenes. This was necessary because the plotting I've done so far has kind of been like planning a road and marking where I think it's going to go with little dots of spray paint. Then, as I actually write, I find the places where the ground is to hard to dig or there are obstacles that I don't want to try to write around, or I just find a better or more interesting direction.

In other words, writing can trump plotting, particularly when it comes to details. So where I ended up on the last big scene did not deposit the story precisely at the place that I had expected when I was plotting. Therefore, re-plotting was necessary.

Once I was ready to start writing, though, I found my reserves of enthusiasm were greatly depleted. This was due to several factors. Fortunately, a good friend called late last night to slap me upside the head with some common sense. At the time he called, I only had 450 words written and was struggling to reach the 500 word minimum quota. After he called, the writing caught fire and I finally stopped at 1200 words. This means I have officially surpassed the 20% completion mark!

Just write, damn it!

I slowed down a little yesterday, not deliberately but because the words seemed to come more slowly. I think I feel prey to a bad habit for writing a first draft: thinking too hard and too long about everything... word choices, characterization, etc. And while I felt good about what I'd written, I finished without that sense of elation that I've been experiencing at the end of the day up to now. I believe the reason for that is that I gave up so much momentum by stopping too often to think.

Still, I wrote another 1,038 words, bringing me to 18% of the first draft completed.

I've been doing a lot of reading of blogs by writers lately, looking for advice on how to build a "writer's platform," which is the latest terminology for writers doing their own marketing and promotion work. In doing this research, I came across a truly hilarious, and highly profane, website and blog--terribleminds.com by writer Chuck Wendig. If you are not easily offended by obscenities (I'm not), you should really check out his page on building a writer's platform, and pretty much anything else he posts to his blog. I laughed so hard reading this stuff that I was nearly in tears, and yet he consistently makes valid, practical points from which any writer will benefit.

But where I really found some advice that was very timely for me, in particular,

The good times keep on rolling

Had another really good day yesterday, wherein I actually wrote about 2,000 words, but did enough adjusting in the process that I actually had a net gain of 1,889 by the time all was said and done. So I am now a solid 15% done with the first draft!

But the exciting thing is that what I did yesterday felt so good. While the genre of this novel is contemporary fantasy, it is also comedic, and the scene I was working on yesterday was especially heavy on the comedy. Writing it was an absolute blast! When I finished, I texted a friend to say "I hope this scene is as funny as I think it is." She later read it and declared that it was, indeed, funny, so I have more or less independent confirmation.

I can only hope that this trend of feeling good about the writing will continue, although it's a double-edged sword; whenever I feel so wholeheartedly enthusiastic, I begin to wonder if I'm losing perspective, which leads to suspicion that the writing isn't as good as I think it is, which then triggers a certainty that it's not, and so on and so forth. You'd think there'd be a good medication for this, wouldn't you?

My cup of inspiration runneth over

After doing a bit of rewriting and tightening of the 11% of my first draft that I had completed by Friday, I found myself in a strange position: I was overly inspired. I know that sounds a little ridiculous, but I honestly felt so good about what I'd written and so full of creative energy that I was momentarily not sure where to go with it all.

At least one character that I'd intended to use and discard turned out to be too interesting and full of possibilities to toss out after a single use. On top of that, I suddenly had a number of ideas for the the climactic scenes of the story that were much more interesting and full of delicious conflict than I had previously imagined.

So, I took the weekend off from writing while I pondered all this. And I'm still not sure exactly what my outline will look like going forward, but yesterday, I did manage to get most of the way through my next scene and produced a tidy sum of 2,258 words, bringing my draft up to 13% completion!

This is a stupid concept that nobody wants to read

As I predicted in yesterday's post, the pace of my writing did indeed slow down yesterday as a result of my having to stop and rework the next portion of my outline. This was necessary because, after actually writing the stuff dictated by my outline so far, the next scenes I had prescribed initially either weren't quite appropriate or just not as good as the ideas I had now.

Still, I managed to do 700 words yesterday, so that's nice!

Interestingly, my subconscious saboteur decided to make another derailment attempt. Last night, I started wondering if maybe my protagonist was the only character I would ever be able to write successfully. (This was brought about by the fact that this is far and away my most successful novel attempt.) I promptly rattled off several other characters I've written successfully (in a separate novel I'm co-authoring), so I beat that attempt at sabotage rather easily.

This morning, however, I was taking a shower and suddenly had the thought pop into my head that my novel plot was stupid. Just silly and stupid and utterly uninteresting to anyone but me. This bit of negativity has been harder to refute, simply because, besides me, nobody has read what I've written yet. I really don't know for sure that my plotline isn't dumb, I have no way of knowing if anyone who doesn't see my face in the mirror every day will find this story compelling. For all I know, people will cringe as they read it and won't progress beyond the first ten pages.

Characters, plot, and writing the first 754 words

Okay, as I was saying in the previous post, I have found a process for planning and plotting a novel that seems to be exactly what I and my quirky little brain need to keep things in focus, on track, and moving forward. And so far, it is working for me: it took me a week and a half or so to plot out the novel, and as of last night, I've written 754 words. Can I get a high-five? *slap!* Thanks!

I found what I didn't even realize I was looking for on the website of Simon Haynes, a science fiction writer in Australia. I started reading some of his articles on writing novels and getting them published. That's when lightning finally struck; specifically, while I was reading the one entitled, "How to plot your novel." In this article, Simon shared his personal method of figuring out both his characters and his plot using mind mapping. He showed an image of his mind map for his first novel, which he produced with Freemind, available by free download.

Looking at Simon's mind map, I experienced a sense of recognition. This was it! The very tool I needed!

Beginning the journey of 50,000-75,000 words

If the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, the journey to write a novel might be said to begin with a thousand first steps. Or at least, that's the way it's worked for me. I've had a number of ideas for novels over the years, and have actually started to write some of them. The novel I'm currently starting? I've started it before - at least twice.

I've spent a lot of time and no small amount of angst trying to analyze the reason or reasons for my failure to bring my novel to term. The nebulous plotline I started with didn't really work out as I wrote, so I tried to force it to. Then, one of my minor characters turned out to talk and behave in ways that didn't suit what I'd planned for her. But the biggest deficiency was that, while I had a vague idea of how I wanted the novel to end, I hadn't even a vague route planned to get me from the beginning to that ending. And my ending wasn't nearly well-formed enough to make a good target.

Pick up any book on novel-writing or even a writer's magazine and you will learn that novels are supposed to be outlined. But for me, writing an outline seemed like a) as much work as writing the novel - maybe even