Week Twenty Seven: Parented!

Read it. Read it and weep.

Between this and last week's story (or excerpt, I guess), I seem to be 1,290 words into a fantasy novel I had outlined about a month ago but then sat on. The great surprise is how much I enjoy writing a scene here and another scene there, rather than starting at the start and working my way through. I'm someone who has to watch movies and their sequels in the order they were intended. I'll never read the end of a book before I begin it (not to name names, Breda). 

But for some reason none of that applies here. Maybe it's because I have so much reverence for story that I'm terrified of writing a bad one, but if I can just sit down and tell myself Today, the merchant talks to Garith about parenting and taking responsibility... and also he's kinda drunk, it feels more like playing than work. I know some (or many) of the details will change later, but for now I'm just exploring character. And building something, scene by scene.

So the time has come, ladies and gents. I'm gonna try to write a book. I'm setting myself a deadline of October 31st for the rough draft (~90,000 words). Too ambitious? I defy your caution.

Please wish me luck (and lots and lots of impulse control).

Meanwhile, did this week's prompt do anything for your own writing?

"The myth is that the magic is so fickle that something so instrumental as an outline will somehow diminish it"

From Chuck Wendig, some new (at least for me) advice about outlining:

14. OUTLINE AS YOU GO

Not comfortable with doing one big hunka-hunka-burning-outline right at the outset? Ta-da, outline as you go. Boom! Solved it. YOU OWE ME MONEY NOW. Ahem. What I’m trying to say is, every week, outline for the week ahead but no further. This keeps you flexible and still makes it feel that you’ve still got some mystery and majesty ahead of you around the corner of every cliff’s edge. Hell, you could even outline only the next day — stop writing today, outline tomorrow’s writing before you begin.

[...]

21. NO, OUTLINING DOES NOT STEAL YOUR MAGIC

Writers are beholden to many fancy myths. “The Muse! My characters talk to me! I’d just die if I couldn’t write!” The myth of how an outline robs you of your creative juju is one of them. I don’t want to defeat your magic. I don’t want to suggest that writing and storytelling isn’t magic — because hot damn, it really is, sometimes. The myth isn’t about the magic; the myth is that the magic is so fickle that something so instrumental as an outline will somehow diminish it. If after outlining a story you think the thunder has been stolen and you don’t want to write it anymore, that’s a problem with you or your story, not with the loss of its presumed magic. An outline can never detail everything. It’ll never excise the magic of all the things that go into the actual day-to-day writing. If that magic is gone, either your story didn’t have it in the first place, or you’re looking for excuses not to write the fucking thing.

Read the whole thing here!