Sunday, October 08, 2006

Starting over. Again.

Well. Here I was minding everybody’s business just like I always do, and working out a new plan for my writing. It’s in its infancy, but it looks like this:
- Take an idea.
- Ask it lots of questions, and don’t take the obvious answers.
- Make an outline.
- Write 500 words a day, every day, no excuses.
- Start at the beginning, write through to the end, no stopping to rewrite.

Then people start talking about NaNoWriMo, and Kelley Armstrong’s Outlining 101 method. So I can’t help but be nosy and check it out.

Wow.

Hey, this I can understand. This I can do. So I took a little idea and ran it through the system to see what would happen, and I’ve got a pretty fleshy idea for a paranormal. Together with my New Plan, I could actually have this written in 6-8 months. At least the SFD, I mean.

So, I’m psyched. Eventually, I’m going to run JUNIPER through this baby. If I had done this before I started writing JUNIPER, do you have any freaking idea how many problems I could have avoided? Thank you Vicki for bringing it up.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all, maybe early for some.

Oh, and I got a new hamster yesterday. (Munchie, the cat, caught Nibble unawares last week, after yours truly left the side off the cage. :o( Poor Nibble.) So this one is called Lamb. She’s beige, short-haired, shy and quiet, very cute.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cool, Cindy! Your plan sounds very concrete and realistic*.

(* Just don't beat yourself up if you have a day where you can't meet your quota. Life intrudes, at times. Unavoidable.)

I was just reading over Outlining 101 last night after seeing a mention of it in Sara's blog. {g} No way am I even going to think of entering NaNoWriMo.

The Outlining 101 course seems very practical and doable. (So far, my hybrid "plotting-pantsing" method is keeping me going in SFDs. But I've made note of the site for future reference...once I read through one of my completed SFDs, I may rethink my method. {bg})

Very cool that you've already run through it and come up with another story. It'll be interesting to find how much changes (or doesn't) with JUNIPER after putting it through "the machine" too. {s}

Happy Thanksgiving to you, too!

I'm sorry for what happened with Nibble. (We have some friends whose dog got their pet rabbit in a very similar event...not nice.) Lamb does sound cute, though.

Jenny said...

Cindy -

Thanks for the link! It was very interesting and I'll go back and read it in more depth later. I'm some sort of hybrid between chunk writer and outliner/plotter. Heh.

Also, thanks for the encouragement. I'm still going to Surrey and I'm looking forward to it. The opinions of a very few people (even if they are Relatively Important) who have never even read my stuff don't hold as much weight with me as all the super-supportive people on the forum who have.

Cindy said...

Dear Mrs. Mitty:
(* Just don't beat yourself up...)
Yeah. Thanks for the reminder, and I'll try. I'm still sorting through ideas. I don't want to rush into another committment. (sp?) Trying a few things on, thinking.

As for Lamb, she has wet-tail and there aren't any pet stores open for me to get drops for her. She probably won't live, but keep your fingers crossed? I know I am.

I haven't read the pantsing article yet, must look for that!

Cindy said...

Dear Jenny:
Yeah, that's a tough one. Chin up! Anyway, you're only 14K in, who knows how many different ways you'll find to make the story original, your very own.

Have fun at Surrey, I'm jealous!

Anonymous said...

Dear Cindy,

Oh my. Consider my fingers crossed. Poor little thing.

I've been printing out my SFD of the western, and oh, my, what a fine mess! Lots of patching and red-lining and arrow drawing in my future. And re-writes. Oh, yeah. {g} May be something to that outlining thing, after all.

I think going slowly into the fantasy novel and going linearly is going to save me a lot of grief, too. {bg}

Slow and steady wins the race, eh?

Cindy said...

Dear Mrs. Mitty:

>>Slow and steady wins the race, eh? <<

Well, here's hoping!!! (G)

Vicki Pettersson said...

Ooh, I'm so happy if I could help! And not to be too helpful, but ... {see my evil grin}

Robert McKee's STORY is really great for the prewriting phase. Not something you should try completing in a month if you haven't ever seen the material before, though. But thought I'd mention it.

Cindy said...

Hi Vicki:

It's on my Christmas list! (S)