Weekend Progress

I’ve had to come up with a new game plan for my story.  Trying to condense all the notes to re-plot the book turned out to be a little overwhelming. I found that I wasn’t doing anything productive and all I managed to do was make piles of categorized notes that left me drained of all energy and over-stimulated. So, I returned them to the bag of doom to re-type in my master spreadsheet at a later date.  Spoiler alert, that later date is not going to happen anytime soon.  

Depression over life-stuff kicked in and I had a very real moment where I decided I would just throw out every writing idea I had because I was done with it all.

I decided against that as, mentally, I’ve been immersed in the world and have it playing as a movie during my waking life and have actually started dreaming about it which has never happened.  I’m taking this as a sign from the universe that giving up isn’t an option.  

I decided that I’m not going to force my tired brain and fragile emotions into doing tasks that aren’t important and aren’t necessary.  I know this story at its core. I don’t need to organize things and agonize while in the process.   

Two weeks ago I carried around my small notebook and journaled the main problem areas and came up with a solution and a plan. 

I decided to write a brand new Chapter 1 and get it as perfect as I can. Not grammatically, but it needed to have the theme, setting, worldbuilding points that I wanted to make, with the dialogue I wanted between the characters.  I needed it to be 2nd draft level.  This is a new concept for me as I generally just write garbage and worry about making it pretty later.  So the 1st draft is a lot of paragraphs, random scenes that sort of connect but I know need work.

I accomplished this goal today and am very excited that I managed it.  It was a daunting task and one that I was afraid to tackle but I believe it checked off all the boxes.  I read it multiple times and didn’t get annoyed or tired with it, so that’s something.

Another thing I realized I needed to do was to make a new map.  Though I enjoy maps in general, I feel like I’ve redone this world map at least 3 times already. The thought of having to do it again made me mad.  But, I needed a larger scale and a different shape.  So, Friday night  I got my craft tote out and worked my magic.  I’m very pleased with how it came out, even though I’m sure I’ll have to play around with it some more.  

All in all, progress was made and I’m excited to get back to a schedule…hopefully.  Wish me luck!

How’s your writing going?