I have rewritten the beginning of Revelation three times now. First with the wrong hero. Then two other versions, which I ultimately combined to show different things about the hero. Okay, fine. He’s starting to talk, I”m cool with that. Then during a series of writing sprints yesterday afternoon, he totally went off and did something that wasn’t planned and now I don’t know what to do with the next scene.
I always have mixed feelings when my characters do this. Sometimes it is a case of them knowing themselves better than I do. I think they’re going to do one thing and they do something else entirely. It might derail my plot for a bit, but often it winds up being stronger because I listened to them instead of myself. Other times they’re trying to totally take the reins and that just doesn’t work for me because it leads to tangents and trips to fluffyverse.
I need to figure out whether I can work with what he just did or not. It doesn’t change the broad scale plot, just how some of the set up unfolds. It means I need to come up with new conflict for this next scene. Which is fine, as the prior version wasn’t going anywhere either (it was supposed to be a chase scene but it was the most boring one I’ve ever written). But I don’t know what the new conflict IS.
I exceeded my word goal for the week yesterday, so I have today to figure things out before I hit it hard tomorrow.
I recently got active at Romance Divas (which I apparently joined last year and never did anything with). They have a chat and challenge section where a bunch of folks get together and do writing sprints. It’s been very effective for me, and I’ve met some lovely writers. Apparently I need the crack of a whip and a little friendly competition to get me out of my rut and back into some kind of productivity.
MayNoWriMo is coming up and I’m trying to decide what kind of goal I want to set. That’s one of the features of MayNoWriMo that I prefer over NaNo. I can’t do 50k in a month. Not with my schedule. Not to mention November is a terrible month for me. But May is good. The semester winds up at the beginning, it’s a day longer, and I set my own goal. I won’t be finishing Revelation. I’m not far enough along with it yet for that to be realistic. So I’m going to be shooting for…some word count. I’m leaning toward 15-16k. That puts me writing 3500-4000 words a week, which is, I think, a manageable pace for me. That ought to get me to the second plot point and into the home stretch of Revelation. I hope to finish a draft of it by the end of June. Which is about the time when life ought to be returning to something resembling normal around here.
It’s out to the in laws’ this afternoon. I think I’m going to throw a beer can chicken on the grill for supper and spend some time writing blog posts for my tour. And if I get really motivated, I may give the dogs a bath.
One thought on “Off Course?”
I’m more of a planned writer. But when I go of course I let it flow, as long as I can come back on course. For me the first draft is about discovering the story. The second bins most of the story, The third finds better story to fill in the gaps. It is a long process.
You could always try go for dinner with the dogs and bathing the in-laws, things outside the norm might increase productivity.