preparation – Stranger Than Truth

I just wanted to write a quick note to say I’m anxious to get started. The ideas are flowing pretty fast and furious, and I’ve already caught myself a few times jotting down a few interesting turns of phrase that I don’t want to lose between now and the First of November. Seventeen hundred words a day every day is quite a mountain to climb, so I’m going to approach it differently: A chapter a day, every day. Maybe that chapter’s a thousand words or maybe it’s three thousand. As long as I hit 50,000 in thirty days, I’ll be happy.

I strongly suspect my first two days are going to be my first and last chapters, so the book will definitely have a conclusion in place by the end of the month. The nice thing about my concept is that the plot will be episodic, so from Day Two to Day Thirty, all I’m doing is building better content based upon what I actually want to write each day, rather than worrying about where I need to be plot-wise in order to complete everything on time. Continue reading “Getting ready to go!”

Outlining. It’s supposed to be amazingly helpful, it’s supposed to help you actually write the novel (in a month or not)… and I’ve never actually done it. At all, for any story, including my win last year. But this year, I’ve finally actually buckled down to Snowflake my novel.

Sort of.

I’m definitely really liking the idea behind Snowflaking my novel, but I really don’t like the idea of actually sitting down and planning it out, scene by scene. That seems a bit too much like micromanaging, to me, haha.

I have, however, written almost 9000 words already on my novel – without writing a single word of prose. I’m expecting to hit almost 15 000 words of research/notes/planning/outlining before November 1st. Most of this planning can be found at my personal blog, though admittedly most of that is older thoughts, and half of that has changed.

Do you prefer to outline, or just fly by the seat of your pants? If you outline, what method do you use? Have you ever Snowflaked?