Thursday Thoughts
It’s June. Yeah. So much for being better at blogging. *sigh* So, since my last post in February, I’ve read MANY more books. I also got my kids through school. In addition to that, I sent my oldest child off to Africa (Ghana) in April (he’s serving a mission for our church). It’s been a crazy, busy time. But now it’s summer! This is my time, right?
( Read more... )
You know I read my first books on writing after I'd already written 3 or 4 novels (that were only in first draft form). I picked up Stephen King's "On Writing", "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamont, and later James Scott Bell's book. Each time I took a bit from each and with Bell's I really tried to implement, make worksheets and outlines wrapped around what was included but what I'm starting to learn is there's nothing wrong with what I'd been doing. Of course I've picked up things that were very helpful but trying to do a Beat sheet or index cards have not worked for me and have hindered rather than helped.
I've also learned sometimes it's the project itself that determines the route. Some novels I've created 1 page, high level outlines and been able to see it from beginning to end. Others I've noodled on longer but I tend to do better on stories/ideas that I've let simmer for awhile before putting it down on paper.
Right now I'm revising/editing a novel I finished in September while trying to draw a big canvas of an outline for a novel I hope to start writing next month (or August). For Nano this past November I used Scrivener and found it to be helpful, even with the index cards on the bulletin board which I did utilize since it helped me to see what each chapter was about in a high level (so instead of doing index cards ahead of time, after I wrote a chapter in Scrivener I went to the other layout in order to see the chapter as an index card and wrote what it was about from there).
Long explanation but I feel simple high level outlines work for me. Some projects I've chunked out more but I've never gotten down into the weeds because it makes it harder to write and discover the story because sometimes our first drafts are for us to learn what type of story we're writing and in order for that to happen the story needs the freedom to breathe to the left, to the right, up, down, sideways, inside out, etc...
My toughest problem is editing, I still haven't nailed the best approach for handling it :\
Reply
Leave a comment