Good afternoon, squiders! It’s snowing here after being in the 80s all week. As it does.
We’re about halfway done with the month! I think, to be on track for my 25K goal, I should be at…oh, like 11.7K.
I’ve only written a few hundred words thus far today, so I’m at, like, 7.6K.
Not amazing. Not great. More than I’ve written in a hot minute, though, certainly.
Most of the words have been on the novella for TDP. I’ve got it outlined to be about 15K, so while I’m not quite as far as I had hoped, I am at least halfway-ish.
I ran into some issues the last few days with my outline.
It turns out I outlined this story in June of 2018. Good Lord! That’s almost five years ago. Anyway, I outlined it then and broke the outline back out last month to plan for this month. And I wasn’t wild about the outline. I think I told you guys this. Some of the later plot points were just…not good.
My choices were: 1) start writing and see if I could fix the story on the go, or 2) fix the outline before I started.
I chose 1, because I am eternally an optimist even though I know how I work.
So, lo and behold, to no one’s surprise, I had a rough time writing yesterday and realized I’d hit the point where the outline was no longer working.
But, also, that the outline method wasn’t quite working.
I have levels of outlining I do, based on estimated word count. Anything under 5K, I use a phase outlining method.
Past 5K, I switch to a 6-act outline.
For longer works, 30K+, I also use the 6-act outline, but I do arc work and tentpoles as well to help with pacing. Different stories and genres may require additional work past that.
So, based on several 7.5K-10K-ish stories I’ve written for, say, anthologies, I outlined this 15K story the same way.
This was apparently a mistake.
So I spent about an hour last night doing my arcs and tentpoles, and now I feel better about the whole thing. I didn’t actually touch the 6-act part even though I maybe should have because it’s still bad, but I’m hoping the tentpoles will let me ignore them.
Or, you know, in three days, we’re going to be back to outlining fixing.
Now, I don’t mind outline fixing. An outline, after all, is an active document whose sole purpose is to help you write your story, and it needs to change as necessary to help you succeed. I just probably should have done the work at the beginning.
Or maybe not! Maybe I needed to get into the story, expand the world and the characters, before I understood enough to make the outline work properly.
I’ve been invited to join a critique group that’s meeting this Sunday. I’d better figure out if I’m going or not, and look at the materials if so. It’s Sunday mornings, which is inconvenient, so I’m going to have to think long and hard about it.
See you guys next week, when I’ve hopefully caught up!
