Outlining: 6
Hi everyone,
This is a short diary today.
I have finished outlining my novel. Yay!!! My outline is a whopping 22K words. It still doesn’t have everything in it, but I feel confident to start fast drafting.
I have also signed up to a ten-week romance course (with assignments and written feedback) to make sure that I’m hitting all the romance beats and I’m getting the tone right. That will probably slow down my fast drafting, but I’m okay with that. I have come to realize that drafting too fast, for me, is a problem as I have no issues writing off point, or writing beautiful scenes that don’t serve the story that I have to delete later.
This time I intend to practice more mindful drafting so that I can follow my outline more closely and I can think a little more before putting down words. This won’t work for everyone but I’ve written enough books (9) to realize that my issue isn’t slow drafting and getting caught up in the edit-as-I-go bug, it’s having to do too much work on the revising side because my story structure is off.
I plan to draft in October to Mid-December and have my draft completed by then. Generally, I can finish my draft in a month, but I’ll be doing the romance course, have a lot of life stuff going on, as well as a small side-project I’m playing with.
Looking at the internet, I read of some people stuck or who having problems focusing long enough to get their project going. My advice is threefold:
1. If you can’t write then read and analyze the plot structure of the book you’re reading. Analyze the description, the dialogue tags, the emotion, the conflict. Write down what you like about the book and what you’d do better (every book can be improved). This has a two-fold effect.
You become a better writer while you’re on a break.
It tends to spark creative energy. If you have thoughts for a new novel or a current one, jot them down while you are doing this exercise until you simply have to write your own story.
2. The second thing I’d do is to: just show up. Maybe you can’t write or usually can’t write anything you think is good, but much of writing is about habit formation. Sit in the chair and write bad stuff for x number of minutes a day, at the same time of the day (if you can). Even copy down your favorite passages from books, write letters to yourself from your characters. Keep a diary about your life. Just sit in a chair and write words. Any kind of words. Eventually these words will turn into the words you want. Also, all writing in bad writing at first, so don’t be afraid to write words you hate. It’s part of the process and generally can’t be skipped.
3. Another piece of advice, is generally for people who lose focus for one reason or another. Maybe you have ADHD? Or you always write on the brink of exhaustion? My advice is to continuously change up your routine. Generally, not the time of day but what you do in the routine. Do you reward yourself for words done? If you do, then every week or couple of weeks change the reward system before it gets stale. If you don’t have a reward system, try one. Do sprints (timed writing sessions where you can only write—you can’t research or look things up, you can only write) and change the length of the sprint. Five minutes, then eighteen minutes, then eleven minutes, then seven minutes. Write in doors, outdoors, go from room to room in your home, writing in a different room each day. Dictate your words, write your words in a notebook, write them on the computer, write them on your phone. Write with music, then write with no music. Write standing up. Writing sitting down. Change things up all the time so that it’s fresh and new and keeps your mind on its’ toes.
Hope those tricks help.
See you next month.
Happy writing,
Joanne.
