Time to Revise Surge of the Soul Eater

Okay so now it’s the 1st of January and I haven’t looked at Surge of the Soul Eater for an entire month. I have done other things and written unrelated short stories elsewhere. Today I returned to the NaNoWriMo site to take the pledge to revise my novel during January and February.

http://nanowrimo.org/now-what/contract

I’m a little frustrated that they don’t have anything up yet for this year’s “Now What?” Months page but they at least have an archive link for previous years. I suppose I need to cut them some slack given that it is only the first day of the year but they’ve only been hovering the link to this page on my dashboard since the end of November so it feels anti-climatic to have January arrive and find nothing new on the page.

I did browse through the archive and found this helpful article on revision that I think I will be using for my first revision.

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Revision Notes Regarding Celeste in Surge of the Soul Eater

I’m thinking that I should invest more in the dynamic between Thomas and his mother, especially in the beginning of the book, during the revision process. As a mother I already know how I react when I’ve lost my child for a second – or five.

NaNo “Vomit Draft” Complete!

I actually did it. I got myself all the way to the end of my story WITHOUT giving up and starting over from scratch. Not the 60k words I originally planned but the NaNo site validated the draft at 51,328 words total. I’ll take it and run. It’s plenty enough to work with for a rough skeleton. Now the real work begins, but for now I’m going to sit back and savor the moment…

You know those cigarillos Thomas had in my book? Yeah… I have those with me tonight. And yes I’m totally going to smoke one. Don’t shoot me.

Reflecting on the Process

It’s strange. I did outline this. I did plan for unveiling some historical context for Thomas with the intent to ramp things up toward the climax. Trouble was I didn’t plan for who or how much exactly so in came the lawyer friend that got mentioned in the beginning of the book but never showed up.

My Apologies

I’ve allowed the characters to drive the story in Episode 6 to some extent. It’s not really a bad thing because it means that I was in the zone and going with the flow while writing despite having an outline. The challenge I have now is that I have a budding romance I didn’t originally plan for on my hands.

This left me with deciding whether to allow it flow as is and potentially derail the outline, squish this plot bunny completely, or somehow figure out how to shape it into the main plot as a subplot. I put a ton of effort into this outline and I refuse to derail it. Let me just say the plot bunny won’t be squished. It keeps hoping back in. So now I’m left with shaping it into a subplot. Which is fine given how this is the “origin story” for Thomas and Rhae if we were to borrow a phrase from the comic book fans. In the short stories where they’re technically already established, they are a pair. In retrospect, I should have planned this in the outline. At least the characters haven’t forgotten who they are, so this is a good thing.

Needless to say Episode 7 is coming out slow. Day 8 only produced 800 that got rewritten many times during the day. I know I broke the rules. The inner critic was so loud that day, I almost didn’t write at all. Day 9 was better with 1508 words and far less revision – mostly just making stupid lines less stupid. Today is Day 10 and I hope to finish the episode but I can’t make any promises. I need to figure out how to resolve the awkwardness (or not, because these two just… ugh!) and then transition to the next episode.

NaNoWriMo is Almost Here

The big event begins in 7 hours for me. Got to take the youngest son Trick-or-Treating here soon. A good chunk of my characters don’t even have names yet! Welp… I guess I couldn’t completely over come the “pantsing” in me. But hey at least I have a solid plot outline for a change and the unnamed characters aren’t needed immediately so hopefully something inspiring will come up soon.

Outline Complete

Spent all day today pounding out the details of my book’s outline. Sorry I have that post locked, but… spoilers. I can think of only one or two people at the moment that I’m willing to let see the outline at this stage. My sister is one of them.

Oddly though I almost feel like I have a plan for a short story series rather than a plan for a single book. I’m suddenly worried I don’t have enough material planned – like do I have enough dead bodies planned, or do I have enough fights lined up, and should I bother with a hint of romance at all – but I suppose that’s where letting the characters drive will come into play. Now to just flesh out the characters and give them life so they can drive when it comes time to write.

Working on Outline and Already Stuck

Day two of trying to flesh out the details of my outline and I’m still stuck with a block I can’t seem to shake off.