Last week was odd. It started with a mystery leak in the kitchen that ate a fair bit of writing time. A leak that, after hunting its source down, turned out to be a spill 🤦♀️ But after that… nothing. No dramas. No llamas. No distractions.
Continue reading “Author Journal 14th – 20th April 2022“Before I write these journal posts, I check back over my planner to get a reminder of what I did the previous week. Turns out that what I thought had happened actually didn’t. I thought I’d remembered the week pretty well–it was my first week back after ten days off; it can’t have been that difficult of a week. Hmm. I was so, so wrong about it.
Continue reading “Author Journal 7th – 13th April 2022“Like all good things, holidays must come to an end. On the one hand, I’m a bit bummed that I don’t get to have a long lie until 0530, but on the other, I’m really excited to get back to my work routine.
I mentioned in a post last week about the importance of taking time off that I had what I’m now calling a Chimp Day… Well, that one day turned into almost a week of downtime–the polar opposite of last time 🎉
I stayed offline, only briefly jumping on to ensure that my scheduled posts went out. But we chilled out for the rest of the time, went for a longish cycle that ended with a picnic, and caught a bit of sun.
Continue reading “Author Journal 31st March – 6th April 2022“Guess who’s on holiday, finally? Yip, that’s me with the huge grin and a list of movies to watch–when I’m not out on the bike with Jez. Like most people, the last week of work before you’re on holiday is a hard slog. And, man, did I feel it.
Continue reading “Author Journal 24th – 30th March 2022“What a week! The last seven days have just flown by. I can’t believe it’s time for another journal entry already.
I upped my writing goal to 4,000 words last week without really looking at what scenes were coming up.
Writing in Adam’s or Elle’s point of view (POV) is easy enough for me to slip into. I can happily go from one to the other and back again without too much mental prep.
But, the next scene wasn’t in either of their POVs; it was in my bad guy, Trevor Blackwell’s. To write Trevor, I have to do a fair bit of mental prep to really get into his skin. Add to that that I haven’t written in his POV since the end of last year. Yip, I started to doubt my 4K word goal right out of the gate.
Continue reading “Author Journal 17th – 23rd March 2022“I’ve been counting down the days for the last month or so. Chomping at the bit to get back to the actual writing of Running the Asset. Well, that time finally came last week. That’s also around the time a wee bit of fear slipped in, tainting my excitement.
Getting back into writing fiction after a break can be a scary thing. It’s like riding a bike after a long time, I suppose. But, not in the analogous way of how you never forget how to do it.
Continue reading “Author Journal 10th – 16th March 2022“I love update post day! It means that I’ve made progress on my WIP, and that I’m ever closer to my goal of releasing Working the Asset.
Since the last update (ten days ago), I’ve completed Pass #5 — four days ahead of schedule 😃🥳 — and have made a start on Pass #6. In fact, I’m 12% of the way in.
For those interested, Pass #6 is all about the characters. Whittling down the cast size, cementing introductions, ensuring that I’ve treated them with respect–even when I’ve got to make them suffer 😈–and a whole host of other character related tasks.
Thanks for reading, and for your support 😍
As always, stay safe and stay awesome!
It’s been a couple of weeks since I did an update post for Working the Asset.
Since the last update, I’ve blasted through Pass #4, the aim of which is to deepen audience delight with genre sequences, dramatic irony, and making sure that the story escalates well.
I’m now working on Pass #5. This pass takes care of the Fou Rs or as H. R. D’Costa (the creator of this outlining method) calls them The Four Workhorses. The four Rs are Realism, Relevance, Repetition, and Rhythm.
For the past few days I’ve been working through my stack of index cards—the continuously growing stack—looking for, and creating, setups and payoffs. And, tomorrow sees me tackling the fun/teeth-drying task of wrangling my subplots into shape.
And onwards!
Thanks for reading, and for your support 😍
As always, stay safe and stay awesome!
Last week I posted about getting stuck into adding some meat to Working the Asset‘s story skeleton. I’d fantasized that I’d have posted that I’d gotten that done by now and was on the way to editorial pass #2…I may have bitten off more than I could chew for the time I had allowed for it.
For most writers, physically writing on those index cards (or anything) is so easy and effortless that the only thought required to fill them out is what happens in the scene.
For me, there’s a lot more involved. For the last twenty years, I’ve suffered from a chronic pain condition called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). It affects my right hand and arm. Take a guess to which hand is my dominant one. Yep, you got it! 😬
Very long story short, the CRPS was caused by an injury sustained while serving in the Navy, and it eventually ended my career. And any prospects of ever having one.
It’s been a while (a really long while) since I’ve done an update post for my writing progress. That’s mainly been down to life getting in the way of writing.
In the last month or so, I’ve taken steps to remedy that—pretty much bahookie in chair and head down kind of steps.
I’m back to working on the outline for Deniable Unit #1. Also, I finally have a working title for DU1: Working the Asset.
The outlining method I’m using is called Iterative Outlining, a method created by H. R. D’Costa.
A quick reminder of what iterative outlining is: it’s like doing all the developmental editing that usually happens after the story is written, but at the outlining stage—in three phases.
There’s a lot of work upfront, and it seems like it’s neverending, but it’s worth it. So far, I’ve saved a whole lot of time by fixing a plot issue I hadn’t even noticed was there. One that would have cost far more time editing at the end.
At last, I’m on the final stage of iterative outlining, called the working outline. This one consists of seven editorial passes:
As of today, I’m 70% of the way through the editorial pass for the plot. Woohoo!
My progress will pick up steam as I work through all the passes, and I’ll share how it’s going here on the blog.
Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you’ll join me as I get ever closer to typing THE END.
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