Writing Update
Scenes Arranged: 0
Total Scenes: 33
It wasn’t a fruitless night, though! As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve made it to the Inciting Incident, the Match for my story. At major moments in the story (about every eighth of the book), I want to weave as many storylines together as possible. If the characters are all bouncing around during the story, these “eighth” moments bring them back together for a moment that will alter the course of the narrative (as well as altering the characters themselves).
Because of that, I have to craft those scenes more carefully to make sure that everything is in place for the scene to have the proper impact. So that’s what I did last night. I mapped out where my five major characters were, what they were doing, and how this one event would affect them. With that done, NOW I can arrange the scenes that will build all of those pieces into a memorable set of chapters. I look forward to getting those down today.
Reading Update
Vengeful: 41%
This book is so addictive. I love Schwab’s style with short chapters and enthralling characters. The back-and-forth style of the Villains books (That is back and forth THROUGH TIME! Talk about speaking to my soul.) keeps me curious as I try to unravel what has happened since Vicious and how that is all going to play out.
Personal Update
My wife and I started watching Manifest a few days ago and it is SO GOOD! The interesting thing that happened last night was that the characters on this show started talking about a concept that is explored in Vicious and Vengeful. I explained it to my wife last night but I was reeling at the comparison. I was geeking out.
In other news, life is still super busy, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. With my sixth and first anniversaries approaching with the love of my life, I’m waxing nostalgic, but I’m so grateful for everything we have and have been through that has made us who we are and brought us to where we are. God is an incredible planner to have figured all this out even before we were born.
Discussion Topic – Work Ethic
This is something I see discussed by authors a lot online: how hard should you work on your book. It’s something I’ve wrestled with a lot because of how busy I feel most days. With a day job and a family and my wife’s business, we’re busier than we’ve ever been. But I’m not alone in that. Many successful authors deal with the same pressures and time constraints (and sleep deprivation) that I do. Some of them I would consider having a heavier share than I do.
Does that stop them? No.
So something I recently got over was whining about the fact that I want to write and can’t. No one, anywhere, ever wants to hear me whine about anything. I have a great job and a wonderful family, not to even start talking about other social woes I don’t have to contend with. So I stopped complaining and got busy.
I reframed what I considered to be “working on my book.” Sure, when I was editing the most recent draft, I had the concrete manuscript to mark my progress. But with that completed and off to my editor for further review and revision, I was pivoting to the intended sequel, Book 2 in the series. That does have some chapters written, but it was in a different incarnation of the book. Undoubtedly some of that will be useful, but some of it will be scrapped too. So before I use any of that, I have to know where to use it.
That brought me back to my outline. So if I can’t use what I’ve written yet and I can’t write anything new yet because I need to know where it’s all going to feel like I’m writing a good second draft (rambling, I know), then how do I mark my progress.
You have seen what I came up with in my daily writing updates here. I’m marking my progress merely by getting scenes composed in yWriter. Each scene is a tiny step closer to my goal of completing the outline. Now that I have something to track, I feel like I have focus. I’m not necessarily filling up a bar of progress like in an RPG video game (since I have no clue yet how many scenes I’ll need; 200? 300?), but I AM making progress.
Having a benchmark of progress helps drive me to work harder and more efficiently on this phase/draft of the book. It stokes my work ethic. Many authors talk about writing every day while some talk about the dangers of that kind of pressure leading to burnout. I have a passion for my writing, but it is at odds with my other responsibilities. The public posting of what I’m doing helps keep me accountable to get SOMETHING done each day. If I can look at what I did yesterday and call it progress, I can rest in that.
What drives you when you’re working on a project? Sound off in the comments. For now…
May the tide carry you to safer shores.
BSG