IWSG: Writing and planning

 

The first Wednesday of every month is the Insecure Writer's Support Group posting day, where writers can express their doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It's a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! Check it out here and join if you want support with your writing. 

Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

Every month, we announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG post. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post or let it inspire your post if you are struggling with something to say. 

Remember, the question is optional!
November 6 question - What's the strangest thing you've ever googled in researching a story? 
 
The awesome co-hosts for the November 6 posting of the IWSG are Sadira Stone, Patricia Josephine, Lisa Buie-Collard, Erika Beebe, and C. Lee McKenzie!
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Welcome to another IWSG post! 

I am looking forward to reading about the weird things people have googled! I don't have any very interesting ones--I mean, every mystery writer googles weird poisons, and things like how long it takes for rigor mortis to wear off. I have gone down the rabbit hole a time or two--the biggest one, which might actually be a wormhole, was the fascination with WWI I developed while thinking about a particular story. That long since left the realm of research and became something I do for its own sake. But I'd rather hear about your adventures!

For myself, as I announced last week, I'm juggling a couple of projects (well, okay, three), including being 5 days into NaNo. I'm working from the most thorough plan I've ever had, and have hit 10,000 words, but I still don't feel like I know what I'm doing or exactly where the story is supposed to be right now. So much for detailed plans.

If you want to get in on another of my projects, a 9000-word Christmas novella featuring the characters from Pismawallops Island, just sign up for my newsletter before Dec. 15. I'm giving the story as a Solstice gift to all my newsletter readers (note: if anyone can recommend how to do that, please let me know--I would rather have something direct than give out Smashwords coupons). Here's a sneak peak at the cover:

Enough about me! I'm off to see what others are up to as we move into the craziest time of the year.

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2019
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

Lots of cool stuff coming up this spring

I have a lot of exciting stuff coming up in the next few months, both here on the blog and in the rest of life.  Well, not so much in life, except that trip to Tucson, AZ, for the Tucson Festival of Books (find me at the Children's Tent from 2-4 on Saturday, March 15.  Not that I'm advertising or anything).

In addition to, or sometimes in place of, the usual reviews and Friday Flash Fiction for the next two months, look out for these events:

• Feb. 10: Cover Reveal for Death By Ice Cream
• Feb. 26: Blurb Reveal for Death By Ice Cream
• March 24 (give or take a little): Death By Ice Cream is released; blog-hop to celebrate the release.  We'll be adding to the fun with a Giveaway, maybe holding a party on the Internet.  Come, and bring chocolate!
• April: The A to Z Challenge.  I've picked my theme: wilderness, with a side of ice cream (guess why!), and plan to include book reviews, wilderness-themed flash fiction, and at least one day per week of pretty picture from the wilds of the Western US.  I'm still looking for kids' and adult books that fit the wilderness theme and the letters of the alphabet, but you can bet there will be more hiker narratives and some of the great adventure stories by Gary Paulsen.

In addition, in late February I'll be participating in a blog hop for The Orphan and the Thief, by M. L. LeGette, a middle grade fantasy that (based on the first two or three chapters) promises to be an exciting read!

And all the while I'm working on my next projects: major revisions for Halitor the Hero, my own middle grade fantasy (with tongue mostly in cheek), and the beginning bits of the third Ninja Librarian collection, in which we deal with the problem of Peggy, not to mention getting back to beating my NaNo novel, the sequel to Death By Ice Cream into sometime more like a book, called (at least for now), Death By Trombone.

So watch this space!

I'd like to finish with a hint at the new cover, or even some cute kittens, but I can't and won't.  Instead, I'll just use my favorite trademark, the post-hike ice cream frenzy:

Plotting, Outlining, and Editing

I've been in book editing mode for several months, which has made me do a lot of thinking not only about editing but about outlines, planning, and making the first draft closer to where I want it to be.

I also just picked off my shelf and started reading a book that's been mouldering there for several years, Donald Maass's Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook.  (I picked it up at the library booksale for cheap, and then never read it).

It's giving me a lot of food for thought about character development and more.  But even before I picked it up, I'd been doing some things I've never done before: plotting the story, and writing back-story on leading characters.  

I've also gone back for another look at How to Write Good by John Vorhaus to refresh my mind about pivots and turning points.

Partly, I'm doing this because I want to make my next book easier to write and--especially--easier to edit.  And I want to do that partly because I want to shoot for a NaNoWriMo (that's National Novel Writing Month, which is November) head start (the target for NaNo is 50,000 words, which is not a full draft of a genre paperback).

My Ninja Librarian novels were really collections of short stories that offered a modest story arc overall.  But this one is a murder mystery (a sequel to one I'm currently editing, which is partly how I know the first version needs to be better!).  And a mystery requires a tight plot, and that seems to be requiring a lot of thinking about a lot of things.

Here's what I've been doing:
--"Outlining" using the "question method," where I start asking questions and as I answer them ask more, until I have a pretty good idea what the story will look like
--creating more characters
--world-building: creating the people, geography, and layout of Pismawallops Island
My efforts to draw maps for this book, as well as for the current WIP, a middle grade fantasy I'm currently calling Halitor the Hero, are laughable, or enough to make you cry.  I need to find a better way to get my mental geography onto paper (it may involve bribing Eldest Son, who creates gorgeous maps of real and fictional places).

I'm hoping that by November, I'll not only know what the story will look like, but more about the town and the people than I will need for this book--I want the world firmly in place in my mind so that I can keep expanding and developing with future books.

Wish me luck!  And leave your tips and tricks and ideas in the comments.  I can use all the help I can get.