So things are getting back underway. I have a new plan (outline) that my husband helped me hash out. In addition to that I had a realization from the most recent writing book I have picked up Story Engineering, where the author said there is little difference between plotters and pantsers, just that plotters do all their planning by perfecting their outline and such before they start to write, and pantsers do all their planning in multiple edits while they’re writing.
In the past when I wrote, I started in on the story and wrote until I had this GREATNEWIDEA that I had to add into the story, so I started over. And I would do that over and over again. That in itself only got me so far because I didn’t understand story structure and I didn’t discipline myself to get to the second half of the book very often.
It did, however, make me realize that I probably will need to go through a few edits like I used to do, so I am starting over from the beginning of the story to add in all of the planning and world building I have developed since January.
Once I get to my halfway point again, I am going to push through to the end, using my new outline. I figure I may not need any more edits than that because I spent so long after my first draft just planning world, characters, and story, but I won’t know until I get there.
My deadline is June 5th, because starting June 6th, I am going to play Xenoblade Chronicles as my reward to myself for getting through the story.
As such, I have three weeks to get through what I already have planned out pretty well (which I think is actually past the halfway point, and to the Dark Night of the Soul (The absolute low point of the story.) <—Look at me embedding parenthesis.) And then four weeks to hammer out the rest of the story. So my specific measurable result is three sections a week. (It's 19k words.) I need to get through, probably two of them this weekend in order for that to work.
I am certainly to the point in my writing career where I can just sit down and force myself to write because it’s time to write. Sometimes I don’t want to, sometimes it comes out pretty rough but most of the time I feel like I am able to push through the ‘ick’ to something that works. So the idea that I’m somehow supposed to write something, and dislike/hate it, but then have that be a part of my book is …well counterintuative at best.
Something 3) I am really learning to go easier on myself. I’m not making great progress on my story. I don’t know how my speed rates against other writers, as I don’t have any data to compare, but I feel like I am stumbling a lot.
