Autumn Lull

Journal 103: 3-17 Sept. 2023

I don’t really know what to talk about this week.

But I skipped last week, and I don’t like letting more than 2 weeks go by without a blog.

This is the lull between book projects. I kind of don’t know what to do with myself. All advice says to through the manuscript down for a month or more and then come back and revise. But I feel like the first chapters were started so long ago that that really doesn’t matter.

I also want to start outlining and working on the character development for the next novel.

I guess I could talk about both of those topics for a short bit and then wander around a few other things. I’ll try to keep you entertained.

Revision

I will admit that I compiled the book and gave the prologue and first chapter a quick scrub. Typos, wrong words, too many words… I cleaned through these and was generally amused by the beginning of the book.

But then I saw that I might have repeated myself multiple times in the book. I have scenes where the characters argue about their course of action. Usually trying to figure out what’s going on and how to counter/ react to the perceived threats.

Somewhere around chapter 20 or so I have a long argument/discussion on where to go/ what to do when there, etc. And several of the salient points were “big reveals” of what could be happening at the climax of the book.

Only… I kind of mention those elements in chapter 1… only I had forgotten about it in the many months, near year, until I got to chapter 20.

Memory and Notes

Since I only outline the salient points… the stones across the river… so much of each chapter is just improved on the day. I jot down notes, create new characters, add to the overall world building.

That means I might (and often DO) forget details, repeat myself thinking the thought is original.

I guess this is the point of revision. To fix all of the stupidity created by the year long writing process and faulty memories.

Notes and Outlines

So… the funny story is that I have been waiting to write the Dusk novel for years. I am super excited about it… and yet I don’t really have a story ready for it. I just have the setting and a number of things going on in it.

But I never actually decided on the main story…

Hell, originally created this chart where I had all the storylines drawn out as bars across each of the novels.

It’s hard to put in words and I don’t have a digital version of the chart. I’ll try to describe it.

The Chart:

The chart is laid out in a grid of five vertical columns, each one corresponding to one of the five books of the Invasion Series. Then down the left side of the chart each line is labeled with a storyline.

Top line is Shadow Elves (Invaders) and there is a bar across all five columns.

Then Slater & Co. bar across all columns

Then I have the B stories, each one is a label in each column. Col 1: Grant. Col 2: Geezer. Etc.

I then have secondary villains and story lines as bars across different books.

The problem is that I wrote this chart in 2018. I wrote the initial ideas and notes, and even some character sketches around then or earlier as well.

Since I improv a lot I changed the course of the novels quite a bit, and introduced new characters.

Ripple Effect

The original plan was to have the A-Story of each novel concentrate on Slater and his crew as they moved through the world. Book two ended with his group breaking up and reforming, losing two characters and picking up one.

As I’m looking at my new blank outline book for Dusk, and looking back at the story seeds I wrote six years ago, they just don’t jive with me anymore. In the old notebook I have the idea of five characters forming a team in Dusk and dealing with X problem.

But in the new notebook, I have characters created in book 1 that are traveling through Dusk that are destined to join up and encounter only two of the original five-character team.

This also happened in the book I just finished. Where I planned a team of all new characters for the B-story, and ended up replacing two of them with characters from the Prequel book (Thesis Novel).

Mental Crisis

The problem is I have this thing where I sometimes think my original ideas might be better than my current. And I FEEL the need to try to follow my old notes. I often battle with what to keep and what to revise and how to do things.

Meaning I will spend weeks worrying about what I’m doing and how I’m doing it.

As it is, at this moment I am thin king of not having Slater & Co show up at all. I might mention them inside one of the interludes or in the prologue. But I’m making the Dusk characters the A-story, and then the B-story is characters from Pharoah’s Gambit.

The ripples have larger and larger affect on the current and future story. I’m already wondering what the hell book 4 and 5 will look like… and the current plan is to have 2 books that might not feature the main characters of the first 2 books.

This is when the self-doubt strikes the hardest.

Outlining

In all cases I will be spending a little more time than usual with figuring out this book BEFORE starting it. I have a lot of work I need to do to make sure I know what the hell I’m doing this time. I really want to sit down and get started on a new novel as this is my favorite time of the year.

This is when I should be writing all the time. But I feel I’ll be away from the keys for a while. Maybe even wait until November and then use NaNoWriMo as a launching pad for the project.

In any case, I will be on here sparsely I work on other projects each day. Next weekend I’ll be away, so no blog. See you in October.

Bye.