Diary of a Writer and her WIP. Entry #27
Every time I start writing a new book I think to myself that I should document the process. Recording the ups and downs, the stumbles and the sprints, the "ahas" and the "oh no's" might give me a boost of confidence the next time I stare at a blank page. I'd have some notes to look back on, a reminder of how I create. I really could have used this reminder when I started my current WIP. I still could use it, actually. I feel like I edited my last book for so long that the know-how of writing a first draft got deleted and written over.
I started this current story over two months ago. That means I've been thinking about writing this W.I.P. diary for at least that long. Thinking. Thinking until I'm over halfway through my word count goal for this book. But never mind that. Today's the day!
Starting with entry #27.
It's a shot in the dark as to how many entries I should have already made at this point in the process. 27 is my birthdate, so I'll go with that. I'm going to number the next entries to come wherever I think the thoughts and ideas originally came to me in the process. Therefore, this diary's entries will not be posted in numerical order, much like I'm writing this book. So here goes...
Entry #27.
I have at least two spiral notebooks in use for this story, a tree's worth of index cards, an ever-growing Scrivener file, and a Pages document that's a long vomit of scene descriptions. Oh, and a poster board with sticky notes. It's too much, but I'm not sure how I should do this differently. My brain needs all kinds of ways to come up with ideas and record them.
It's an unwieldy mass right now. In fact, it's so bad that I could probably call this little project "Diary of an Unwieldy W.I.P." But I don't want to put that energy out into the universe. In fact, I should probably call it Diary of a Fast, Nearly Perfect, and Completely Genius First Draft.
Yeah, that's it. That's what I want.
In the meantime, as I was sitting at soccer practice tonight, I pulled out a third notebook and started scribbling notes for scenes that I'd already written but still need massive tweaking.
Although I really need to move forward, it's not the step back that it might seem. I'm getting closer to figuring out this story.
Onward!