Today’s stats
Words written: 214
Song that’s been stuck in my head all day: Cabinet Man by Lemon Demon (warning: song is weird, tagging for slight violence/body horror if you look this one up)
Scented candle level: almost full (got a new one!)
ughhhhhhhhhhh
I’m tired. I had a lengthy and stressful errand to run earlier, and my story brain is not giving me any hints about how this next scene starts.
When I plan things out, I know the story beats and what order they come in. A lot of writing advice books will make it sound like if you have your story beats mapped out, then you basically have your work cut out for you and you just have to sit down and write it. Which is simple, right?
…no.
The story beats are the easy part. I had most of MMPC’s laid out in my initial outline, which I wrote at 4am before any of the actual story was written. The hard part is the details–where scenes start and end, how transitions happen, how to add just enough of the right kinds of description to make it feel like time has passed without basically going “we’re skipping the boring travel bits, okay??” in the narrative.
I wrote 200 words of “we’re getting through the boring travel bits” just now. The travel is too emotionally important (because it’s a race against the clock, although one we know the protagonist will probably win) to just skip. I hacked it by writing a rest stop halfway through (which makes the timeskip feel less jarring by splitting it in two) and kept it from getting boring by making a joke.
That’s my default for getting readers through boring things like exposition or transitions, honestly–jokes and character interaction. You can get by with a lot of exposition if you have characters arguing or joking or complaining about it, especially if it’s funny. If it’s really, truly in character, it doesn’t feel stilted or infodumpy, and it’s a lot more fun to read than an infodump or a sudden transition.
So, that transition’s about done. I know the important thing that happens at the end of the scene I’m going into. I have no idea what the rest of the scene looks like.
I may have to write the end of the scene, and go back in later and fill in the rest. That’s not my favorite tactic, because I get hung up not knowing the details that the beginning of the scene will establish, and I have to remind myself that I can put in whatever details I want because I’m probably going to rewrite this part after I write the first half anyway, and it forces my writer-brain to try to think in non-chronological order, which is not exactly easy for me.
Sometimes I do write scenes that are far ahead of my actual place in writing the story, and it doesn’t bother me because I think of them as “notes.” I guess I need to write some notes.
A couple more 2k days and this book will be finished. Probably sometime this week, so my beta reader will get her cake ^^ I’m actually pretty jazzed about that. I just happen to be tired right now and flailing at my keyboard too much to appreciate it right this second :p
Then I’m going to take a day off, maybe two, before jumping back in with Kai and The Green Goliath. I don’t want to take too long, though; losing momentum can spell trouble for me, because I’m the kind of person who’s very easily distracted by new projects.
Or even old ones. You know, like the handmade candles I still haven’t put up on Etsy since the lady who was selling them for me had to close her salon for a while because of the pandemic and returned the remaining stock. Fortunately, I don’t currently have the space to start a podcast or tackle any big oil paintings (or film the Skillshare course I’d really like to make about painting mediums), and my Japanese learning app has stopped sending me notifications for now, and the rebranding and new pieces I have planned for my Redbubble account can wait. (Please pay your respects to my mushroom lineart poster, which has been waiting to be finalized and uploaded for… I don’t even know how long now. RIP.) And I’m sure my Clojure programming textbook won’t hold a grudge if it spends a while longer boosting the height of my computer monitor.
…Did you think I was exaggerating? I haven’t even scratched the surface, really. I’ll get back to all those ideas and projects; I generally do. But they’ll have to wait a while.
This sounds chaotic, and it kind of is, but it’s probably necessary; I think this wide focus is part of what makes me a good writer. I’m interested in a lot of different topics, I find new skills relatively easy to pick up, and I’m not afraid to try things. Writing is the most persistent and longstanding object of my attention, but it’s not the only one, and that’s probably a good thing in the long run. I do wish I were a bit more consistent with it, though.
Let’s just stick with writing for now, okay?
Wordfully yours,
–Jade