Sketching and writing. That is generally how I write; sketching scenes and conversations – reams of dialogue- until a point where I feel ready to fling myself with abandon into the actual first draft. But right now it isn’t happening. The flinging.
I’m currently doing far more sketching than normal. Now that my last story, a YA contemporary romance is done, I seem to be finding the actual commitment to a new project difficult.
Not that I haven’t got ideas, currently I am sketching plots for no less than five stories, but I’m still waiting for one to surface as the front runner.
Contestant One has the first thirty pages in rough draft and the outline plot, but I ground to a halt on it. Contestant Two has an outline plot, and a pile of conversations scribbled in a note book. Three has an outline on the computer, and the idea of its form, which is the more unusual element. Then there is Four; a sequel, the second part of a trilogy that I wrote a while ago for a 9-12s. Do you start on a sequel when the first part is still hiding in a drawer? Perhaps not, but the plot is roughed, in another drawer somewhere. (Honestly, it isn’t as disorganised as it sounds.)
Contestant Five, is still a sketchy idea, and it is screaming for a plotting spreadsheet. Yes, I know, a spreadsheet. Mostly I plot onto a big sheet of clean A3 paper, with messy scribbles, ideally while sitting outside in the sunshine. There isn’t a lot of that happening at the moment. Neither one nor the other. But the form just feels like it warrants a spreadsheet, or else I’m just letting this technology thrill go to my head.
So currently I am being a story-slut, and playing all of them at the same time. I’m taking the poly-amorous approach, and dating each every so often, usually in the 750words.com venue and then building files on them all.
And at some point, one file will have to be bigger than the rest, right? One has to come out on top, as the one I have most material on and the one that I should just sit down and focus on.
Or am I being that girl, and just waiting for something better to come along?
Today’s Distraction Tool; school permissions slips.
To be honest - the idea of writing FIVE novels at the same time terrifies me. I find one quite enough to deal with.
ReplyDeleteI do have ideas drifting in the back of my mind but they're rarely more than a misty maybes. I look forward to seeing which of your *amours* you decide to make an honest woman of - so to speak.
Good luck!
When you write it like that it terrifies me too!. But I don't see it as writing five at the same time, as I just see it as sketching at the moment. It is more like getting the voices out of my head and onto the paper, so i don't forget them. I don't really have much say in which voice/dialogue appears. (Am I sounding slightly psychotic?) Once one steps out as the winner, the others will take a back seat though.
DeleteSounds like a plan - just not one I could work with. That said, I have spent a few weeks wrestling with a short story. (I got pulled into agreeing to enter a local competition.) It took me out of my comfort zone, away from planning my new novel & into a completely different world. All the time, the characters in TreeBook (shorthand for new novel) whispered from the shadows.
ReplyDeleteIt fascinates me how differently we writers work.
(I have voices in my head too - they tell me to eat chocolate.)