The great slogging
Two-thousand seven hundred and nineteen words. Yep, Stewards of the Plane, book 3, is officially a work in progress. My brain is buzzing with ideas and I find my fingers itching to type during the day at my day job... I guess it's time to start taking my little red laptop into the office with me so that I can satisfy my writing-crack habit at lunch time.
I have a very high-level outline of the structure of the book which I will start filling out as I go.
I used to be a completely 'organic' writer... a pantser as it's commonly called. But after writing a few screenplays and reading 'Story Engineering' by Larry Brooks, I decided that I could use a little more structure. I wasn't finishing anything, because by the time I finished a completed draft I was tired of the story and lost interest in working on it -- because it was So. Much. Work. that it sucked the creative juices out of me. Sure, I got wordage -- but that doesn't do much for a hopeful writer who can't really finish what she starts. Since I am a task-oriented person in my professional day-job life as a database administrator, I decided that trying something a little more structured and goal oriented would be worth a shot.
As far as story engineering goes, I find the book entertaining, but full of fluffy feel-good metaphors. I understand that this works for some people, but I was looking for more of a bullet list on what to do, so I ended up skimming quite a bit. However, Larry's book still worked for me, because what I wanted -- what I needed -- was in there. I just had to flip pages to get it. I tested his 'technique' on my first full-length screen play and was pleased -- I got to the end! I polished it! It was a finished work! YAY! But a screenplay is small potatoes compared to the word count required for a novel.
So when I finally got the idea for A Quarrel Called, I decided to go back to this method, since it was the one that worked... and guess what? I wrote that book in record time. I set a goal for myself -- the 2014 FenCon writer's workshop (I wanted to have at least 55K done by the time the workshop started) and that also really helped me. I set a very steady pace of 5000 words a week. If I went over, then great! And I did often, because when I am on a roll, I can really write fast. But even if I went over, I still just stuck with my normal goal. I didn't make it larger just because I had a few good weeks in a row. It took a lot of stress off. I wrote at lunchtime while I was at work, and on some evenings, and at least a few hours a weekend. It took a lot of pressure off knowing I had already met my daily word count goal over lunch so on those days that I wanted to do something besides write after work, like hang out with my husband or exercise, or whatever, I could do that with no guilt.
I took some time off for holidays too, and I still finished the book in about seven months, with plenty of breaks (at least six to eight weeks of downtime). So then, in February of 2015, I began book 2, A Calling of Quarrels, and finished it in the same manner. Similar pace, same 'loose outline' to start... and even with taking a couple of months off in the middle, I finished it in August of 2015. So it seems that with a loose outline (that gets more granular as I get to the crises and climax) I can write about two books a year -- and not be 'trying very hard' to do it. I can only imagine how much I could get done if only I didn't have a dayjob to pay those pesky bills.
Anyhoooo... book three is officially started. It has a title as well, but I'm not going to tell you what it is yet. I'm saving that up for a nice little post some time in the next couple of months.
Two-thousand seven hundred and nineteen words. Woohoo!