I’ve been working on the book a lot lately. I have a plot outline nailed down and an ending (which still needs to be written). Since I like writing better than editing and structuring, I’ve decided to save the ending for…well, the end. It’s a goal to work up to. I know what I want to say and it won’t take long to tie up the loose threads. I’m getting excited about seeing this project come to an end.
Of draft one, anyway. Then I have to go over it about six or seven more times. At least. And then shop it out to agents. So, that’s a while off.
Right now, I am sorting through the scenes and chapters I have written and playing a sort of connect-the-dots with the story. The bummer about this is that even though I appreciate the power of Scrivener v. 3.0, it has some inherent problems. One of which is just how easy it is to get lost in it. I have notes and scenes and everything else just jotted down in little files. And when you can’t find these files, you tend to rewrite the scenes you really want to happen.
So you are left with duplicates of scenes, told from different perspectives. Told with different tone and voice. And some of them are repetitious as hell. Some of them are too good to dispose of, and would be overpowering to combine.
So, there’s a lot of junk I am sorting through. A few scenes I have written several times and not even realized it.
Hopefully my draft will be cleaner and at least I’ll have a plot to guide the file heirarchy.
I’m part fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants writer and part plotter. Usually when I get the emotion of the story down and have some very strong scenes to write out is when I connect them together with plot. I say that like I know what I’m doing. I’ve only written and published one book and so far I’m discovering the process is different every time.
A lot of that has to do with the software I’m using. With Scrivener, I can make a folder and within it will have different files that are essentially scenes. I can move these around as I want, and as long as they are in the folder, they will follow a sequence. With the old method, I started at the beginning and I just wrote from beginning to end, writing the book as I wanted it to be read.
The way I write allows for getting lost in the weeds sometimes. So I’ll need to watch that.
Anyway, it’s late and I’m tired. Tomorrow promises more writing. More scenes. And more sorting through a bunch of crap to build a story.
Wendigo Mountain 