Out of the Ashes & Building a Raft!

Alright so yes, I could go into mounds of detail about how I'm a slacker and should have been posting these last few (6? months).  Personal tragedy has taken me away from my ability to concentrate or do so, however, this has not inhibited the actual writing process.  There's got to be some truth to writing and pain and how they kind of feed off each other.  On this day in particular, I am feeling very "Out of the Ashes", but that is another post.

I wanted to share a success I have had!  And that is the hard work of actually writing.  Believe me when I tell you that us writers could literally spend days making blog posts, reading blog posts, going to workshops, reading articles on our craft, critiquing someone else's craft, etc, and never actually write one damn word of our own.  So, without further adieu:

I currently have 3 major projects on the go.

1) There's my "fun" go-to project when I need a break from thinking real hard.  It's a fun, spunky contemporary fantasy whose characters make me laugh out loud and takes twists and turns when I least expect them.

2) A secondary YA novel that I started working, realised is probably going to be late getting into the post-apocalyptic craze and might be popular several years down the road instead when things inevitably cycle around again like they always do.  In all fairness, its quite a bit different and the concept is catchy so I think I could have some success with it, but my other projects are just taking over.  Which leads to the last and most important project on the go...

3) My "serious" WIP that is a historical fantasy,  38k words in.  And I just completed a synopsis-thus-far on Monday, with a cue card scramble of what's to come.

My morning jigsaw scramble:

 

Trust me when I tell you that this was not an easy task for a linear thinker like myself.  I am very much a "go-in-a-straight-line" kind of person.  So when the suggestion was given, by my creative writing professor from university, to just write each scene down on a card and shuffle them around til it fit, my internal control freak was in agony.  So because I'm a bit of masochist, as all writers must be, and because I literally have banged my head against the wall of this plot for a few weeks now, I gave it a shot.

Now, I won't tell you that everything magically fit into place.  In fact there's still some cards that are missing, and they are certainly not in perfect order, but guess what?

I have a plot!  Or at least, the scope of a plot!  I am making connections between events, seeing transitions, finding ways to get to what I already knew was there but had no idea how to reach.  Kind of like seeing an island in the distance and having no idea how to go about building a raft.  Where do I get wood?  What do I use to hold it all together?  Can it hold up out there?  What if its farther than I thought it was...?

So, all this to say:  I have a pretty general and at the same time concrete idea of where the plot is going now.  

Is it terrifying?  Oh, yes.  Yes it is.  Because once again, its looking HUGE, but that's what edits and rewrites are for.  

Did I mention that when I finally got done with Paper Dreams, I actually ended up cutting 9k words?  And that was just from significant line editing, never mind rewriting scenes and actual book surgery.  9k words of "Oh gee, I use too many adverbs or say the same thing four times".

Anyway, I hope to be posting more frequently and keeping everyone up to date on the process/craft/daily grind/ecstatic joy of writing as a career.  Thanks for checking in with me, delinquent that I am!