Turning Backwards?

So, I forgot to write a blog post for a few months. Big surprise there. Honestly, I thought I had just written one, so it couldn't possibly be time for another. Time is meaningless.

How's the writing going, you might ask. A reasonable question. Surely I must have been doing something all this time.

Well, I have decided that I'm more than likely going to work on the second draft of Cold Blooded during NaNoWriMo in November, because maybe a deadline will help me keep going. So all I need to do is finish my outline between now and then, and I'll be all ready to go.

What's that? I have to actually work on my outline to finish it?

Oh. Oh no.

A Look Into the Past

I've had some realizations about flashbacks. Mainly, that yes, I can have them. All the advice I'd read cautioned against flashbacks,  saying that there was surely a better way to show backstory. That you should sneakily ease in that exposition throughout the story. That flashbacks break up the narrative flow, and readers can't wait for them to be over.

But you know what? Fuck that.

I recently read Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. It's mainly about a heist, but it uses flashbacks to reveal the histories of the main characters, and they are so good. You get just enough of the backstory to wonder what happened next, and then it cuts back to the present.

More to Life Than Just Death

Well, I'm back to working on my vampire novel, Cold Blooded, apparently. Sort of. It's mostly like backstory stuff, that will then have an impact on the main plot. Namely, I've written a little Wikipedia-style article about a fictional punk band, as well as working on some songs of said band. 

Am I going to actually need this in the novel? I don't know. Maybe. I have… some thoughts. But if nothing else, it's helping to develop the protagonist's history. And it's easier than figuring out the plot. 

Because, yes, my plot still has holes in it. 

Only Dealing With Draft One Problems

Here we are, post-Camp NaNo.

Did I meet my writing goal? Yes.

Did I lower my writing goal to something I knew I could meet easier? Also yes.

But that's not the point. It's not cheating when you're allowed to change you goal. And the real goal was just to get started on this story. Which I did. I didn't finish it, but that's okay. I figured out some of the hows and whys that are going to make writing the climax easier.

I'm still going to have to do some heavy edits to the beginning, because, like I said last time, there's a lot of important stuff that's missing. So this was by no means going to come out of April a finished product. I think some of that is going to be solved by better figuring out the POV and voice of the story.

Dropping Some Plot Relevant Knowledge

Camp NaNo is… progressing. Very slowly. I'm not writing as often as I would like, but I am writing, so that's an improvement.

I'm maybe… 50 or 60% through the plot. Maybe. Depending on how long the climax and resolution takes. But we're headed in that direction.

Having not yet completed Draft One, I can already tell that I'm going to need to rewrite the beginning. There's a lot of information, like world building and backstory, that I have all figured out, and needs to be in there, that just… isn’t in there. Stuff like what sort of time period this is set in, and who these characters are and why they're doing what they're doing. You know, important stuff. I also spent a lot of time figuring out what kind of a ship they have, and that's just… never mentioned.

Setting Goals

Whoops, I started writing this in February and then forgot about it. What is time, anyway.

I plotted out about half of the short story I mentioned last time before realizing I wasn't quite sure how it ended. Or how it... climaxed. Then, quite suddenly, I realized the secret that had been eluding me (Sunlight! Windows!) and wrote out a chunk of important dialogue while I was supposed to be sleeping. So this thing is still afloat.

Untethered From the Dock

 All right. I've taken a nice little break, and I'm back.

Have I made progress on my vampire novel? Hahahaha! No. 

I have, however, had another idea. Probably more of a short story.

So here's what happened.

I was listening to a song. This song. And I said to myself, there's a story idea in this somewhere. I'm just not sure what it is. And then it occurred to me, after hearing the song, I don't know, 20 more times.

NaNo 2020 Review

So I've made it through NaNoWriMo. I did not win. And just for anyone not familiar with NaNo, "winning" just means you wrote 50,000 words. You get a PDF certificate that says you won. It's not a competition where your work is judged. You don't get your book published. You just have a whole bunch of words that you wrote, that you can edit into something better, if you want to. It's a challenge, not a competition.

Anyway, I didn't write 50,000 words. I wrote 33,007. Honestly, not bad. Some of it was not complete crap. But more importantly, I learned a valuable lesson.

I am not a pantser.

It's All Relative

Instead of writing for hours today, I got distracted with trying to figure out how various characters were related. It matter to the plot, I'm not just being crazy.

This is what I have created:

It's not entirely filled in, because not everyone matters. But I needed to know how two characters (the dark blue boxes) were related. Because my characters can't figure it out if I don't know.

It's Fine, Everything Is Fine

So the first week of NaNoWriMo is over. I'm behind schedule. Big surprise there. I guess Past Me had more initiative to sit down and write 50,000 words, and I just don't have that anymore.

Anyway, there's still plenty of time to catch up. It's fine. Assuming I get my shit together.

I've tentatively titled the book The Light in the Dark. You might ask, what does that mean? I'm not entirely sure. I'm hoping that will become clear as I write. It comes from Takida's The Artist, and just seemed like it would mean something in the context of the story.