Planning for writing

I have been a little bit busy with my uni work of late. It is taking up most of my thinking time and currently all of my writing time.

But that is OK.

And it is OK because it is important, enjoyable and all leads toward my long term writing goals.

Despite the enjoyment I am getting from this writing at the moment, it is disappointing that my current work in progress has had to take a back seat. The longer I'm not working on it, the further my finish time gets pushed out.

Yet I still have that writing time booked. I still get up at the same time, sit in my study and write. I may not be writing my novel but it is writing.

And uni won't last forever, and my workload will ease and when I get to the study at 5am, I'll be able to write my novel and not my uni specific work. And I won't have to retrain myself.

The current heavy workload for uni has also taught me that I can get more done of an evening than I thought I could, as I usually work best of a morning. I also discovered that I don't need to watch so much of the telly; I can record the good bits and watch later. As long as I have a plan of what I would like to achieve I usually do what I set out to in a session, or at least get reasonably close.

Planning for my writing, what I want to achieve and what I am going to write has been a great help and improved the quality of my writing.

Each month I have a list of goals, I then transfer these goals to a work plan. The work plan details all I need to do to reach my goals and how and when I am going to do them. I then use each week of this plan to detail what I need to do each day. It seems to be working well.

I am also planning more for each piece of writing. There are so many steps before the actual writing or aspects of what we are going to write that need to be posted for uni each week. Each of these steps I have found add to the work as a whole; and help me for future writing projects.

So I'm flat out, and not writing my novel, but I am happy that this all leads to a better writing overall and therefore worth every moment.

Happy Scribbling.

The To-Do List

I continue to battle to get it all done at the moment.

I did manage to send my novel out into the world again. This could up to six months for a response, or non-response as the publishing houses are tending toward at the moment.

My writing journal has been very helpful. It is also a great reference to flip back through the pages and see how I’m going and where there may be repeat problems. A problem I have discovered is planning the next session. Not that planning is a problem, but when I do it is.

At the end of each session, I need to map out what I want to do at the next session. If I don’t, I stumble. Sometimes I can get straight into what I want, but mostly I fiddle and check emails and so on before I get down to what is important and then find I have little time left.

Given the amount of study I’m trying to do, I am sticking to my early morning writing times for novel writing. If I miss the session it is hard to make it up during the day, unless I’m organised and can write at lunch time. But it rarely happens. This adds to the pressure and pushes out the deadlines. I can’t be too hard on myself though or I won’t get anything done. I need to take each new day as a fresh start.

I am attempting to follow a suggestion from Scott H Young about planning and to do lists. I may have mentioned before that I love lists, but they can become as much of a procrastination tool as a time management one. Scott’s suggestion is a weekly/daily list.

Start with the weekly list which shows all the things to be achieved that week. Then using that as a reference write, out the daily to do list for the following day. At the end of the day write the next day’s list and so on. Each day taking from the weekly list to ensure it all gets done.

My weekly list looks a little daunting at the moment, but my weeks haven’t really changed that much over the last few months. Perhaps it is linked to my energy levels. I need to keep moving though if I’m going to achieve all that I want to this year. I may be feeling the pressure but I am enjoying every minute.

Happy Scribbling

Life's Pressures

As I have started back at my day job after 4 (nearly 5) weeks off I have started to feel the pressure. Of everything. With my day job I found that it is just as busy and overwhelming as it was before my break, which was quite disappointing. And then I began to worry that perhaps I had planned or hoped to achieve too much with my writing this year.

I also hoped to blog more regularly but what time I do have seems to be going to other things, not always productive.  And then of course there is family, friends, uni work and the occasional spot of reading to fit in.

My main writing focus is my novels and I am currently looking at or working on three. You probably agree with me by this point that I am indeed mad.

Novel Number 1 – trying to get it published, so I’m researching agents, refining chapters to send, writing covering letters. (Although it may be absolute rubbish and never get anywhere)

Novel Number 2 – reworking, revising a first draft into something more (I was at nearly 90,000 words by end of first draft and I hope for it to reach around 150,000 – a long way to go).

Novel Number 3 – early planning stages.

I thought that trying to concentrate on three different stories might be bit much but perhaps the pressure will actually help me get somewhere. I have most of what I need for the first one. I have even picked a favoured agency. Part of me is worried that it won’t get anywhere so I’m holding off a little but really it would only take me a couple of days to get the submission finalised and sent.

When I break it down into clear steps and see that it is not only possible but could be done by the end of the weekend I start to feel better about the process. So if it is rejected that’s ok. I’m all that much closer with my next submission. And if it never takes off, I have another book in the works and a trilogy slowly mapping its way around my study walls.

Novel Number 2 needs a lot more love and attention, every day, and I haven’t been giving it the attention it needs. I know what I need to do and I worked well last year, so time to knuckle down, book out that hour a day and go for it.

Novel Number 3 is happily moving all by itself. I am only spending a couple of hours (at most) a week thinking about plot points and characters and mapping out what should happen when. It is a skeleton and although with some ideas a whole scene comes to mind, I can just put down some notes and move on.

The door is covered in an almost complete Book One, some small gaps towards the end of the book, but I know where the main characters need to be at that point. Some of the detail will come once I start writing it, but as long as I get some ideas down it should work well. I have started using a pencil to get my ideas down (that includes in notebooks) so the cards look blank in the photo. Some contain only a short sentence, others are full.

I have bits of Book two and three but not as ordered as book one. By the time I start writing I would like it all mapped out. This is a very new process for me so I’m interested in how it will go. But as eager as I am to start writing it I think I should wait until I am finished Novel Number 2. Or I will be working on bits of books for ever...

Then of course there are the little ideas that keep creeping in and tapping on my brain asking to be written. Whole new worlds and friends calling to shared. They could be next but when looking at the list above Number 3 is really three books...so I have five to complete before I can move to the next project.

I’ll just continue to scribble down small ideas, either on the door, or the board in the study, or an index card, or one of the many notebooks I have stashed around the place, or typed up here to share with you.

Happy Scribbling

P.S. The Kitchen Door has become a learning tool for my daughter who is learning to read...hopefully sometime soon I can win it back for notes of my own.

Planning

I am very good at planning my time, well I’m reasonably good at it. I like to know what I have to do and by when I should have it done by. Recently I have been detailing my writing projects in a work plan, like I do my day job tasks. But when it comes to planning out a story I have never employed the same tools.

I may have mentioned that I’m not so good at planning novels. I just start to write from an idea and see what happens. My current work is following this process quite clearly. I just write and although I have an idea of what I would like to happen, I’m not sure where and how it is going to get there until the words are on the page.

I have been reading about different planning techniques and was struck by one so I am giving it a go for my next novel. I am hoping the story will cover three books and I have mapped out most of the main characters and some of the minor characters. I have recently given up the kitchen door to map this out on an old white board. This way I can add to it and not worry about having to rub it off...at least for a while.

The planning technique that I am trialling takes the main characters viewpoints that the story will follow, an idea of how long the work is to be and how long an average scene is. Then taking this, divide the total length by the length of a scene to work out roughly how many scenes I will need. Then decide which characters get the majority of scenes. For example, my story is about three sisters so I want at least half of the book to be from their point of view, the rest will be split up amongst minor characters.

Then using index cards, count out the number of scenes for each character required. Starting with the minor characters viewpoints write out a one sentence idea for a scene do this for the number of scenes you have. Then start mapping out the plot, moving the cards around to work out the right order for the story.

This idea was given as a quick way of plotting for when you’re in a hurry and a bit stuck. But so far it is actually helping me a lot. I only had the first scene in my head for this story, now I have an idea of characters and as I map out the workings of the world more and more characters are coming to me. I haven’t started to put down all the scenes yet but as I think of one interaction between characters, it leads to others and more ideas of what could happen.

I am looking forward to the playing stage, where I can move the cards around and work out how the story fits together. I even have a blank canvas in the study door (pictured) where I plan to stick the cards when they are filled out.

I have found in the past that my characters run away with their own ideas and as they start to develop they don’t always agree with me as to how they should behave or act. So although this series will be well mapped out before I actually start to write it, I am sure that it may not necessarily follow that path, or they may be some changes, or deviations. And I’m ok with that. That, for me, is the joy of writing fiction.

Happy Scribbling