…and no end in sight.
The Spicers story is so much fun, it’s mutating into a novella. I’ve just completed chapter ten, and I have drafted chapters eleven to nineteen.
I’ve drawn maps and made calculations about mileage for ox carts, have come up with some villains and made a culinary point. Oh yeah, and I managed to mention pirates as well as dragons. Boojah.
But seriously, I’m starting to think this might turn into a book(-let?) for real this time. Some days I’m very uninspired and have nothing to write, but on other days I sit down and write 3000 words in one sitting before I really need to pee.
I’ve given the first chapters to my best friend, who is now threatening to whip me into writing every time we speak. “Stop socializing, go away and write how it continues!” While I’m not sure how well I work under threat of physical punishment, I seem to work well with praise. Well, if you take the demand for “MOAR!!” as praise (which it is, trust me on this.)
To be honest, at the very beginning it was just a few ideas I had, and I wasn’t sure where I was going with it. Then I came across the beginning of another story I never finished writing, and it seemed to fit the story so well that I broke the bits apart and reused them in the Spicers story. Then I recycled a story-less character I had floating around in my ideas file. Then I added this and that, and slowly the original draft completely disappeared and a very different story emerged.
Then one day I sat down and wrote out the plotline I had so far, and some muse must have bitten me, because I kept going and filled half a notebook with an outline for the rest.
I’ve changed that outline around several times depending on the additional ideas I’ve had since then (or the uncool stuff I threw out again), but now I have a plan where my story is going. Writing has become much easier, because I don’t have to make up everything on the spot anymore. I can follow along my bulletpoints, and when my characters board a ship, I know where that ship ought to end up. I just have to make up the journey – the How -, without having to worry about the Why. Seems like a good method.
Yes yes, I hear you gasp “You started a book without a plot outline?!?”. Yeah, I did. But remember, it was only supposed to be a story. I don’t have money for creative writing classes that teach you stuff like this, I’m making it up as I go along. Before this I was writing fairytales for children, where the prince gets the princess in the end and they live happily ever after. Throw a talking rabbit or a magic blue flower in and you’re good to go, no outlines needed.
Ah, the chaotic ways of creativity, ha ha.