Ink Raindrops

Good grief. I’m so very sorry for the delay, ladies and gentlemen. I was so happy to have finally finished my outlining that I announced it on Facebook and Twitter, and then forgot to share it here. The rest of the delay has been a combination of life issues that I’d prefer not to go into. I am fine, John and I are fine, and there’s no reason to worry. Life just sometimes brings you to a point where you have to ask yourself some difficult and frustrating questions about how to proceed in life. I mentioned before that I’m trying to redirect a lot of my life right now on top of tackling Clarion. This is part of that deal. I’m finding my answers, one slow step at a time.

But as with last time, you are here to listen to what I’ve written lately, not my personal transformations. I’m a fantasy writer, not a psychologist – though I do enjoy psychology and the study of how people’s minds work. Though I am done with my outlining (YAY) I regret to report that I haven’t done much of anything since then. Despite the other things going on, I have done my best to keep at least some of my mind on the goal, and I have some good ideas as soon as I am ready to begin writing. The other part of the game is trying to learn to use Final Draft, a popular script-writing software program. If it proves to be too difficult or too complicated for what I need, I will go back to using regular word processing programs, but I’m hoping it will be able to offer me some helpful shortcuts and tricks that are useful for scripts and less so for writing novels.

Am I behind on my schedule? Well, yes. But that had already happened. Tomorrow will be week three of the Write-A-Thon, and by my original schedule, I had anticipated being one week into my script right now. That’s not going to happen, and it’s more because of the fact that I took longer to finish my outline than the couple of days I’ve taken off. By the numbers, it looks and sounds bad, but I keep reminding myself that I still have three weeks to finish this project. That means a rough draft, probably an edit or two, and any final polish that needs to happen by then. That’s a long time, and I’m not writing a full story in this script. It’s a bunch of scenes that will be interspersed with gameplay and other distractions. I’m still certain that I can pull this off. That doesn’t mean I get to take a bunch of days off, but it does mean that I haven’t jeopardized anything yet. I’ll take that. Sometimes, even we superhuman writers need a chance to be human.

Tonight, I’m going to finish the very relaxing and fun day that I have had by not writing. It will be the last intentional day I take off for awhile. Tomorrow, I’m going to take the time to look through Final Draft and learn what I need to (or decide it’s too much and scrap it.) Monday will begin the scriptwriting in earnest. I know it’s going to be a better week, both because I’m going to have less going on in it, and because I’m going to make it that way for myself. It will be busy, and productive, and fun. Why? Because I said so!

Well, hello again, ladies and gentlemen. As you have probably noticed, I did not post an excited, breathless monologue praising myself on the completion of the first third of my proposed schedule yesterday. That’s because it’s not done. Website maintenance, Internet outages and life in general all conspired at once to take me out of the game on Monday, and I decided, in the end, to let it. I’ve been working almost nonstop since this whole thing began, and even longer before it, so that I could get things ready to go. It’s been a long time since I had a good, old-fashioned day off. I confess – I really enjoyed it, and I really needed it.

I awoke this morning refreshed and ready to go. Though I am now one day behind my original schedule, I am 110% convinced it is the right place for me to be right now. There is very much a thing as pushing one’s self too hard, and in the pursuit of not slacking off, I think I’ve been too hard on myself for taking the time that I need. I don’t like going back on my word. Accountability is really important to me. But how many times have I said that this was all flexible? I need to listen to myself, it would seem!

So, the current status is as follows. What should have been my last chapter is complete. However, what I’ve decided to do is end the vast majority of plot threads here, and then have a mini chapter that is comprised of the last few important, major details and the final boss fight. It’s not a real chapter that requires the same level of attention that my others have. I already know how it’s going down and what I need to do. No questions. No monkeying around. It’s been this way in my head since I first imagined this project. In other words, I am done – but I’m not quite done. There’s still a little bit more to go.

Because of how easy I expect this ending to get put on paper, I also expect that I will be able to begin bullet-pointing things out tomorrow as well. I am anticipating being ready to move on to the second phase of this project – script drafting – tomorrow or Thursday at the latest. That will put me two or three days behind the original schedule, but I’m not going to obsess about that any more than I already have. It is worth it. I am curious to see, in the end, just how correct or incorrect my estimates were, so that’s educational for me too. The better I’m familiar with how much time I need for things, the easier it will be for me to commit to projects in the future.

I’ll see you guys tomorrow! Here’s to hoping for the best.

All right, folks. Say hello to the two-week checkpoint of the Clarion Write-A-Thon! Don’t worry, it doesn’t bite. Hard. Let it sniff your fingers first, that always helps.

The good news is that I am on the cusp of completing my outlining process. I have, however, ended up slower than I intended today. The boom and bust cycle seems to be a common theme for me right now. For every day I’m up, there’s another day I’m down, and vice versa. Today is a down day. I blame most of it on my summer allergies. While I did not start the chapter I intended, today, I did take a look at the end of the previous chapter that I wrote yesterday and decided it needed a little work. The end result is that I’m no further ahead than I was, but what I have is, quite frankly, a lot better.

Tomorrow is my first personal checkpoint, at which I am supposed to be finished outlining and begin working on the first draft of my script. I can still do that, if tomorrow is a boom day. Thanks to my new ending, I have an even better idea of where this chapter is going, so it’s possible. If it isn’t, then I may need to consider taking one or two extra days to finish. That’s not the intent, but it is possible. As I’ve said before, I made these checkpoints flexible because this is a new kind of project for me, and I was well aware that my personal estimates may have been too much or too little for what I needed. The truth is that I doubt it will take me two weeks to go from multiple first drafts to a final draft. My plan was as follows:

June 16th-July 11th – Complete outline.
July 12th-July 25th – First draft(s) complete.
July 26th-August 6th – Project complete.

I think if I take a couple days out of that last segment and use them at the end of the first, I’ll still be more than OK. Perhaps two weeks was just too aggressive an estimate, given how much new writing I still had yet to do. I didn’t want to allow myself any time for goofing around, but I’m not sure I gave myself a reasonable amount of time for thinking, either! It’s important to make sure my head and the story are on the same page, y’know? This isn’t like role-playing, where whatever I say will just continue on forever. I have to tell a story from start to finish, which makes it a lot harder than that.

So there we have it. I’m going to bust my rear tomorrow to try and get the story done. Because I haven’t separated the plot points into formal bullet points still, I may need at least one extra day to do that now. But getting the story done and written out, 100%, is my chief goal and the one that’s going to enable me to get to the bullet point part. This comes first. I really don’t think that transformation is going to take more than a day at the most. I know the story has gotten better for each time I’ve stopped for time to think and consider things a little further, so even if it’s making me slower and I don’t like that, I do think it’s for the best. As long as I don’t dawdle about moving between the end of this phase and the beginning of the draft phase, everything is right as rain.

For now, I’m off to try to wake up my fuzzy head and try to stop sneezing. If anyone has a good word to put in with the good Lord about His allergens, I sure would appreciate it.

Ooh, lucky (or unlucky) 13! Tomorrow will mark the official two-week point for the Clarion Write-A-Thon. I know my personal goal puts Monday as two weeks – that’s just my pet peeve. For me, Monday is the start of the week, not Sunday, so that’s what I’m counting. (Rest assured I am counting it properly for my end date, though!)

I’ll keep this short, since I had a lot to say yesterday: I’m on pace, as I hoped I would be. Today’s work involved a fair bit of triage, which is to say that I cut out a very large chunk of stuff I did yesterday that wasn’t working for me, and replaced it with some stuff I like better. The result was enough to get me moving and finished with the chapter. Yay! There is the minor problem that this chapter does not currently contain a boss creature for players to fight, but I’m willing to overlook that – it’s a gameplay flaw, not a story flaw. I’m sure that I can jury-rig a boss in there if I must later. The conflict and drama for this chapter is not a fight, but a fair bit of character development.

Tomorrow, it’ll be on to what should be the final full chapter. There will be an ending chapter after it, but the majority of the story should be told in the next couple of days. I’m excited to see what will come of it. Stay tuned!