One of my favorite procrastination methods during college was playing Text Twist. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a game that has jumbled letters and you’re supposed to see how many words you can come up with out of that series of letters. As a total Scrabble-geek, it’s a lot of fun for me. When you get stuck, you can click “scramble” or “jumble” or something to that effect, and it will mix up the letters.
I sort of feel like that’s what’s going on with my HOC plot right now. Tomorrow it will have been 2 weeks since I’ve written anything, 3 since I’ve written consistently. I keep trying to focus on TD since it comes first chronologically, but my brain won’t drop HOC. It keeps taking existing components of plot and throwing in new ones and jumbling them all up. It has now become my pattern that I have random ideas in the car or while out running errands. So far, I think they’ve been good ones in terms of the adjustments I’m having to make to the set up. One of the problems with the most recent version is that there were no real suspects. Well now I have suspects–and they’re a lot closer to home than either Collin or Kensie would like. I also came up with some additional conflict to throw in, as well as some thoughts on how to draw out the sexual tension in one of the scenes I know I’ll be writing. I’ve changed where, how, and by whom the first body will be found, which will ratchet up the immediacy and personalize the murder from the get go.
Even though I wish I were writing more consistently at the moment, I am content with my plotting progress and how things seem to be coming together. Taking time off is not a bad thing. My brain’s still working, and I think maybe recovering from some burnout. I’ll get back to it soon and keep plotting in the meantime.
I will be taking a couple of days off to plow through the 2nd in Nora’s Sign of 7 trilogy that’s coming out May 6th. My happy self will be leaving home EARLY before work to go pick it up that morning! Anyway, I want to reread the first one. Maybe I’ll go do that now.