So… writing in March didn’t exactly go as planned. I kinda got busy and completely forgot about it. I did do some other writing for ExploreLivermore and I managed to finish my So Rich, So Poor review, but fiction writing kinda didn’t happen. Happy distractions abounded, from Daniel’s birthday, my mom coming to visit, and we moved our new cat into my room (bad idea as far as productivity was concerned – hard to write when you’re being headbutted, kneaded, and having your keyboard walked on).
Besides the external reasons, there were internal ones as well. For the last three months, I was setting a daily wordcount goal and more-or-less hitting it, but the lack of direction and goals was demotivating and trying to come up with new ideas every time I sat down to write became exhausting.
So in the next month (or couple), the plan is, well, to plan. I’m going to take my binder of freewrites and my list of summaries of those freewrites and try to choose and combine and embellish on them to try to create an outline of a story which might turn into something I could be happy with.
I have this book to help me on the way:
I like Paula Munier’s Plot Perfect because her way of developing plot from theme resonates with my inner English nerd. I could never get into the Hero’s Journey because I think it’s too formulaic (there have to be other kinds of stories…) or the Snowflake Method because I thought it was too vague (things happen one after another, but what’s the point?). I like how Plot Perfect shows you how to structure plot around meaning and how to use themes to relate subplots to one other. A lot of her exercises are organic and outward-branching instead of clamping down from the outside, and I like that a lot because it doesn’t make me feel limited or labeled.
So I’ll go do that, and get back to you… hopefully before June! Although April and May are going to be busy too… I am also still working on that History of Western Philosophy post (with lots of notes), so watch out for that!
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