Write-a-thon Project Update

Hey all.  Just a quick note for those following my current writing project (if you aren’t, and would like to, go here, and donate $10 or more).  I know it’s been a little while since I uploaded any new installments.  Life’s been extra engaging this summer, in most of the right ways, but proper scheduling has nonetheless proven difficult.

Long story short (ha ha), I did a bit of work on it on Friday, even wrote a few hundred words, mostly scene-setting and description, then ran into a bit of a wall, since I found myself in the same place as my protagonist, standing there ready to begin the next chapter, but with no real idea what I was doing or where I was trying to go, at least not right away.  So I’ve had to step back from actual word-production and figure out what’s next.

On a positive note, I went and had a bite and a drink at Quoin and made some good progress.  I decided to switch mental gears and busted out an old notebook (last written in, I sh-t you not, in 1998) and a pen and sat there at the bar and just worked it out.

I’ve heard it said that pen and paper engages different parts of your brain than typing, and I’ve had some previous success switching up formats, at least while I’m trying to figure out what happens and why.  I hate (hate hate hate) trying to write prose longhand; I think my default sentence structure is too complicated and it looks wrong on the page.  But I have found it helpful for plotting and sussing out what my writer brain is really trying to get at with a story.

So anyway, I have the next little bit plotted out, and on paper, too.  Just got to sit down and write it, which I’ll do soon.  I may be falling behind, but I will get the first draft done before Clarion is over, dagnabit.